


The Breathless

by Nagaem_C



Series: Dark Ripples [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Ripples AU, Drug Use, F/M, First Meetings, Lifelong Guardian, Magical Realism, Miscarriage, POV Lestrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-03-26 12:10:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 27,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3850486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaem_C/pseuds/Nagaem_C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg Lestrade has been given a strange and stressful calling: supernatural guardianship over a boy he's never met. As years pass, he searches for balance in love and a rewarding career, all while keeping a powerful secret that does more than take his breath away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strange Days

  
**1\. Strange Days**  


.

 

Greg Lestrade is thirteen and a half years old, the first time it happens.

He's playing with his neighbour Alex O'Dell, kicking a football back and forth in the scrubby vacant lot at the back end of his street. Suddenly, he starts gasping for air, inexplicably unable to get a full breath; he kicks the ball long and wide, sending Alex scrambling off after it, and it's as if the cold spring sunlight is being sucked away along with the dwindling oxygen. Greg's vision darkens and wrinkles queasily around the edges, everything seems to switch to slow-motion, and another image becomes visible atop the fast-fading sight of his friend's retreating back...

Greg sees an infant, tiny and pale, surely less than six months old. He can hear voices; there are two women sitting nearby, chatting over tea. The women don't see when the baby gets hold of something he shouldn't, but within seconds he has begun to choke.

 _They haven't noticed,_ Greg thinks, _why haven't they noticed?_

Desperately, he tries to say something, do something—and in the next moment his perspective changes; he's seeing the unfamiliar room as if from the older woman's eyes, and in his panic he _pushes_ —he doesn't know what he does, really—the woman turns her head and sees the baby's predicament at last, lunging to clear its airway and save it.

Greg's vision clears; air rushes into his lungs as if he's surfaced from a deep swimming pool, and he bends double, coughing and panting, as his friend jogs back to him with the retrieved ball.

He doesn't say anything to Alex about it. It happened so fast, it made no sense; within an hour or so he's practically forgotten about it.

The next morning, while Greg is getting ready for school, he notices just one silver hair. It tucks down behind his ear, hardly perceptible in his longish brown mop, and he leaves it alone for a whole week, taken with the novelty of it...but he's not even fourteen; the next weekend, he plucks it out using his older sister Corrie's tweezers, and doesn't think of it again.

 

.

 

The second time it happens, Greg's a week shy of his sixteenth birthday. This time he sees a toddler with dark, curly hair; he knows deep down it's the same boy he'd seen as an infant, but he doesn't understand how he knows it. (He doesn't understand any of it, though, so that aspect hardly seems worth worrying over.)

Afterwards, Greg shuts himself in his bedroom. Mum and Corrie are speculating loudly downstairs over whether it had been an asthma attack, or whether allergies run in the family. He's shaken by the strange, surreal memory of the two boys running in the wild back gardens with their rolling, uneven tussocks of hills, the little one straying out of sight and too near the stream, running high from recent rains; the panicked, instinctive jolt of finding the older boy and _pushing_ to get his attention where it needed to be.

_What did I do?_

 

.

 

It happens again, and again and again, as the dark-haired little boy gets older and more precocious. Always the same boy; always the intense shortness of breath, and the strange, dark double-vision that reminds Greg of the time his science teacher demonstrated polarised glass. And always a single silver hair, the next day...sometimes more than one, if Greg has had to make a real effort.

By the time Greg is eighteen, he's uncomfortably aware of the many, _many_ ways a determined young child can endanger its own life. (Surely _this_ boy gets into more trouble than the average—from the little Greg has been able to glean, he's got a highly intelligent sort of curiosity—nevertheless, Greg makes a shaken vow that he will never have children of his own, if he can help it.) He's taken to spending time in the library, sitting in an isolated area of the stacks while he studies: CPR, first aid, history, all sorts of religions. He's begun to give a lot of thought to what he is, and why he is. Is there a name for it? Is there historical evidence of anything like it, or even a legend? And if there were record of someone else having these... _ripples_ —he has to call them something—would it be as anything other than the transcribed ravings of a committed madman?

He meets with his local vicar, and asks Alex to help him set up a meeting with a priest at his Catholic church a few streets over, too. Two careful, nervous conversations later, with questions couched in vague double-talk and answers that leave him even more confused, his Mum seems to think he's making plans for seminary. Greg resolves to drop that line of research, then and there.

Instead, he distracts Mum with the announcement that he wants to be a policeman, wants to move to London and join up with the Met. He's been dreaming of the opportunity to help more people—people in the _real_ world, whom he can touch and talk to. He wants to be able to do good deeds that he can actually speak about.

Just as he'd hoped, Mum latches onto this idea with great enthusiasm, and Greg's tentative foray into theology is shortly replaced around the family dinner table with talk of his bright future in law enforcement.

 

.

 

Greg is fast approaching twenty, and he calculates that his charge is approximately six years old. The boy is called "Sherlock" apparently, a strange sort of name to hear shouted in one's mind by various people nearby—he's not sure if it's a sign of proof that the ripples are real, or just evidence that his overactive imagination is completely ridiculous. It seems as if Sherlock's heedless tendencies have been somewhat curtailed by his beginning school, though.

Amazingly, Greg has managed to get through his police training without major incident. Only once during that period had he found himself caught in a ripple with people around. It had happened during a five kilometre run; he'd juddered to a halt, and his assessment officer had told him afterwards that he'd stared into space, panting and unresponsive, for nearly a minute. He'd managed to convince the man that he was simply feeling the effects of a chest cold he was having trouble shaking; it had been a near thing, but the excuse had worked, and at least nobody had suspected him of a propensity towards seizure.

These days, Greg is much more careful.

Now he's a junior constable, relegated to foot patrol for parking violations as he works his way through the required two years' probationary service. He keeps himself in a perpetual state of readiness while on duty, eyes sharp and roving for details. Knowing that at any moment he might lose touch with his surroundings, he has good reason to step carefully and cross streets quickly. When he enters any new area he automatically scans it, watching out for where he could escape to be alone, where he could lean against a wall and wait out a ripple. He's found that with concentration he can keep control of himself for a handful of seconds, now, when the darkness starts rushing in; it's generally enough to let him duck into a quiet space, thinking _what is that idiot child up to now_ as he begins to gasp for air.

He isn't surprised that Sherlock is, so far, safest while at school. So he does his best to schedule his working shifts on weekdays, in mornings. On his days off he keeps to himself, at first, still getting comfortable with life in the tiny flat he's renting; now and then Sherlock takes it into his fool head to climb along the roof ridge of a weekend, or search a nearby field for specimens of poisonous snakes, and Greg handles these incidents without undue concern for his appearance in the real world.

Living alone means no witnesses, and he's certainly better off that way.

 

\-----

 


	2. Vigilant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn't do for Greg to find out for sure he's _really crazy_ , now would it?

  
**2\. Vigilant**  


.

 

Eventually Greg gets bored of being safe, of course. He may be _whatever this is,_ and he may sport worrisome little wings of silver at his temples, but he's still young, barely twenty-two and full of untapped energy; it doesn't take much convincing for him to start going along with a few of his new mates, to pubs and the occasional dance club. He figures that little Sherlock must have a bedtime, after all.

The club's music is pounding, on one such evening, when a beautiful girl takes an unexpected interest in him. She's tall and willowy, with a lush fall of thick chestnut hair, and large, dark eyes that seem all-knowing. She sways close and grabs him lightly around the waist, somehow taming his awkward bounces into something that almost looks like real dancing, and when she leans close to be heard over the beat Greg's pulse trips over itself.

"I'm Nadia," she calls into his ear.

He twists his neck to return the favour. "My name's Greg."

"I think your silver is sexy, Greg," she says next, shocking him into nearly tramping on her foot.

They dance together the rest of the night, and when she smiles at him it's like sunshine.

 

.

 

They start dating right away, falling into a cosy relationship with almost none of effort his previous girlfriends had required. Greg's jumpy at first, leaving himself a perpetual exit route in case the air in the room suddenly disappears, but things have been thankfully slow, recently, on the child-with-a-death-wish front. Soon enough he's so comfortable with Nadia that he very nearly forgets to even worry about Sherlock.

One lazy Saturday afternoon about six months on, she's sitting sideways across the little two-seat sofa in his flat, flipping through a thick paperback book.

"What's that?" he asks, strolling in from the kitchen with a bag of crisps.

Nadia chirps, "Oh, Laura lent me it." She tilts her face up for a slightly salty kiss when he's in range. "Meanings of names, going back hundreds of years. There's a lot of really interesting stuff in here!"

"Yeah? So what's Nadia mean?"

"Mm, guess."

"Unbearably sexy."

"You muppet," she giggles, raising her legs so he can slide underneath. When they're settled to her satisfaction, she tells him, "Nadia means 'hope'. And my middle name—Renée—that's 'to be born again', I like that a lot."

"Mm, it's nice," he agrees. "What about me?"

"Ooh, yeah, let's see...Gregory, that means 'vigilant'. Not bad, for a copper, huh. What's your middle name, then?"

He wrinkles his nose a bit as he tells her. "Theodore."

After a moment's page turning, she makes a little _a-ha_ noise under her breath and reports, "Theodore; 'divine gift'."

He laughs loudly, surprising himself; he can't help it, and he isn't able to explain to her why he finds it so very funny.

 

.

 

The quiet period lasts a surprisingly long while; there are only about seven incidents involving Sherlock over the space of the next thirty months or so, and Greg's relationship with Nadia flourishes right along with his first few years as a full-fledged contstable. But the serenity ends with a vengeance, when autumn rolls around after Greg's twenty-third birthday. Suddenly there are three ripples in the space of two weeks, careless, deliberate dangers that seem somehow uncharacteristic of the brilliant child; Greg wonders why he is so sullen and bent on destruction. He wonders why finding his _push_ has been so much harder, too.

When he wakes struggling for breath, jolted out of his dreams by a late night chemistry experiment about to go terribly wrong, he finally realises what has changed. He has to send his eyes all the way down to the back bedroom on the ground floor, nudge and shove Sherlock's father awake and _push_ his reluctant feet upstairs to investigate an imagined noise, a difficult task that leaves Greg sweating with the effort long after he regains his access to oxygen.

The older brother has gone.

Three days later, he's over at Nadia's flat for dinner when a ripple hits him mid-bite. He has time for only a shocked exclamation of " _Fuck_ ," spitting his unchewed morsel of goulash unceremoniously onto the edge of his plate before ducking sideways to fight through it. When he comes back into focus, his girlfriend is hovering helplessly over him, eyes watery and wide with concern.

"Sorry," he wheezes. "Not your cooking, I swear."

"I should hope not; my Baba would take that as an insult to her recipe." She smiles to mirror him, but her lips are pressed thin and trembling a little.

"I'm okay. Promise. It's—it's just a thing, that happens, sometimes. It's no big deal."

"Didn't _look_ like no big deal. Your eyes were bugging out, and it was like you couldn't even see me!"

He takes her hands, stills their fidgeting. "Dia. Sweetheart, look at me. I'm fine now, okay? Don't need a doctor, don't need anything. There's nothing wrong with me," he says firmly, and he's not sure if he's lying, but she calms down.

As they settle in to finish their dinner, Greg thinks about Nadia's grandmother, a tottering, sharp-witted bundle of Romanian pluck. The day he was introduced, she'd spent twenty minutes expounding on the subject of ghosts and superstitious charms; Nadia had rolled her eyes just a little, but he could tell she knew all Baba's stories by heart, too.

 _Maybe it really would be all right to tell her,_ he thinks, chewing thoughtfully.

_Maybe someday._

 

.

 

Greg works up the nerve to propose at New Year's, just before the fireworks start up to kick off 1990. Nadia accepts, laughing through happy tears, and drags him off to the nearest phone box. He squeezes into it beside her, stuffing a finger in his ear to block the noise of the celebrating streets, as she wakes her Mama and Baba with the news.

He'll be twenty-seven when summer next comes around, and almost-thirteen Sherlock has been sent off to boarding school; with the amount of trouble he'd seemed to be causing around his parents' country home, deprived of his brother's somewhat steadying influence, Greg's not surprised.

Of course, being at boarding school doesn't mean that Sherlock is safe from harm. Greg wouldn't even have figured out he was _there_ if not for the ripples, which seem to have begun taking a somewhat broader view of what constitutes necessity. Surely whatever it is Sherlock is doing in the school's lab, a failure to wear safety goggles isn't exactly a direct threat to his life? (Or, perhaps it is. It's not like Greg would know better.) He tries to take his time as much as he can, paying close attention to try and learn the new surroundings and the sort of people that he can usually find nearby.

What he learns, within a few months, is that the sort of people he can find nearby are often the wrong sort.

He'd worried that the ripples were beginning to happen with less dangerous provocation, but soon he sees that isn't quite true: the first time Greg is caught breathless over Sherlock surrounded by the bigger boys, he can tell straight off it isn't Sherlock's first time.

He's _furious._

Greg comes to hate them right away. They're all _children_ , just boys, but they are so bloody _cruel_ —and they target Sherlock at least once a week, although it doesn't cause a ripple every time. The one with the thick nose and the flapping jaw repeatedly crows "Holmes" during his taunting, so that's some new information, at least. _Sherlock Holmes_ , what a name; Greg is tempted to do a records search at the station, try and figure out what school it is, but he's stopped by superstitious fear.

It wouldn't do for Greg to find out for sure he's _really crazy_ , now would it?

 

\-----

 


	3. Transition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's as if some invisible puzzle piece has just slid into its proper place, at last.

  
**3\. Transition**  


.

 

Greg and Nadia have been engaged for almost six months, and the lease is up on her flat. She says it's time they find a new place and move in together. It's a bit sooner than Greg had expected, to be honest, but he's game for whatever she wants to do...until he remembers Sherlock.

 _How will I handle this?_ he wonders as he begins to fill boxes in his flat. _It's not as if I can just tell her, out of the blue!_

He had _considered_ it, of course. During the peaceful early years of their relationship, he'd nearly blurted it out more than once—while he was delirious with post-coital bliss, relaxed and in the mood for storytelling, it had seemed just as plausible a topic of discussion as the confession that his sister had enjoyed dressing him up in her old clothes when he was four.

_"So, well, get this. Sometimes, I have to take a break from breathing to save this little kid's life with the power of my mind..."_

...No, it's _definitely_ a good thing that Greg had managed to still his wagging tongue, on those occasions.

In all this time, he's been fortunate enough that he's dealt with only three ripples in her presence. Three times in nearly five years isn't a bad average at all, considering the overall frequency with which he's experienced them; it helps that he's placed such importance on improving his skills at evasion and escape. Or, maybe, Nadia is a lucky charm.

Greg hopes that's the case, really; those damned bullies have remained persistent, and there's still nearly a month left in the summer term. It's become an ongoing strategy game, one that's been a relentless distraction at the edge of Greg's thoughts during his patrol shifts; just as Sherlock has apparently changed his habits, the other boys have varied their plan of attack. By extension, it's forced the unseen player in their dangerous game to find new ways to accomplish his duty.

Sherlock begins to duck out through the kitchens after the evening meal; Big-nose and his gang catch him at it the second or third time around; Greg brings the burly school dishwasher in from his cigarette break early. Sherlock finds a window niche in a disused stairwell, a quiet place to sit and read; the gang corners him, with no innocent bystanders anywhere around to interfere; with effort, Greg manages to get into the head of one of the backup boys, _pushing_ him just enough to make a foot slip, and the group is distracted by his painful tumble down the stairs.

Greg feels badly about that one, but only a little.

His ripples don't allow him access to see the aftermath of these incidents, or the lead-up to them; he has no way of asking Sherlock if he's okay, of coaching him on ways to try verbally defusing bad situations, of walking him across to a nurse's office and waiting while they make sure he's not suffered cracked ribs or worse. And while it's a sorely tempting idea to finally search out his charge—to travel across the city, or across the country, to put an end to these kids' awful game in person—the fact remains that it's just not feasible. What possible excuse could he give the school officials, to justify knowledge that he's got no logical means of having? And what about young Sherlock himself? What could he possibly say to the boy, that would make any sense at all?

He thinks, sometimes, about what he'd _like_ to say.

_"Hi, so, I know you don't know me, but...stop almost fucking dying so much, okay? It's getting bloody difficult to deal with!"_

 

.

 

Two days before the move, Greg sees a barber for a close-cropped buzz. It's begun to be more noticeable, on the mornings he wakes with a brand new swath of silver, and some of the guys at the station have started making cracks about _Old Man Lestrade_. There's enough there, now, that he probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the mirror if his gain were still a single hair each time...but gone are the comparatively easy days of Sherlock's early childhood. The shorter his hair, he figures, the less comment he'll draw as it keeps changing in sudden fingernail-size patches.

He hates the result, but pretends it's exactly what he wanted.

Nadia hates it too, and makes him promise to let it grow out. He agrees somewhat reluctantly, already thinking about other ways he might disguise the evidence of his secret. A few weeks later, he stands bewildered before a selection of hair dyes at the chemist's, until a rosy-cheeked shop assistant takes pity on him and helps him choose the right shade of moustache touch-up colour.

When Greg returns to the new flat, his fiancée is still at work: her company is catering a special event, and she won't return 'til late. He takes the bag from the chemist's into the loo; the new hair gel, he puts away in the medicine cabinet. He hides the other little box in a Tupperware container and submerges it in the toilet tank.

In case of emergency, it's always worth it to be prepared.

 

.

 

Christmas rolls around, and another school term is through without notable incident. It's funny, really, in a macabre sort of way, that a term during which Sherlock's life is threatened only six or seven times can be considered a good one. Greg suspects his expectations have become a bit skewed.

Greg's Mum visits London for three days before the holiday; she and Nadia spend the time exchanging recipes and nattering on about wedding things. His sister Corrie and her American husband, Pat, have moved away to New York, but she sends Greg a little photo album full of his two-year-old nephew Michael's exploits. On Christmas day, Nadia's mother gives Greg a pocket watch that had once belonged to her late husband. Baba Cosmina has knitted him a hat in pale grey wool speckled all over with black, and she chortles that she's seeing the future when he tries it on; he laughs and agrees that she's likely not far off.

Greg wonders what's under the tree, for the youngest in the Holmes household. He wonders, too, what it is that Sherlock wants to be when he grows up. He doesn't have a very clear picture of the boy's interests, of course; beyond chemistry, which is obvious, his other academic pursuits are so far not as likely to kill him, and are therefore invisible. But Greg's been practicing his visual acuity, setting up tests for himself to try and increase the amount of detail he's able to recall from his brief ripples. He knows he's seen piles of thick texts, ranging from advanced maths and anatomy to geology and mythology, many clearly not part of the standard study materials for most schools.

There's a violin case, too, and stacks of sheet music that change from ripple to ripple. Greg finds himself wishing he could hear Sherlock play.

He imagines the boy must be brilliant at it.

 

.

 

The wedding takes place on the first Saturday in July. It rains.

 

.

 

They honeymoon in western Romania. It's a chance to visit members of Nadia's extended family along the way, most of whom had last seen her as an infant if they'd met her at all. Over a long weekend they stay with a cousin, in a tiny strip of a village southeast of Timişoara; the single road is paved with gravel and lined with fragrant plum trees, heavy with fruit. Greg smiles and nods, repeats a few broken phrases, clutches Dia's hand and whispers thanks when she saves him from floundering conversations.

One of the eldest great-aunts stares at him, and doesn't stop staring for most of their three-day visit. Greg catches her out of the corner of his eye once, when no-one else is near, moving her hand at her waist in what he assumes is some kind of quick warding sign. When he turns back, she is wiping bony fingers on her embroidered apron instead, eyeing him warily. He returns his most winning smile.

In the heat of the afternoon, Greg walks south to the end of the road, facing away from the string of homes and the faraway city beyond. He stares out across dry-looking fields scattered with scrubby trees and telegraph poles, squints into the white glare of patchy clouds and thinks about his life.

He thinks about Sherlock.

For a long while he stands there, lost in his mind; eventually there's a scuffing sound in the dirt behind him, and then Nadia slips her arms around his waist from behind.

"Penny for your thoughts," she murmurs into his shoulder, tucking her chin alongside his cheek to follow his gaze.

Honesty walks a dangerous line, so he pulls out another answer. "I was thinking about work."

"That's the _last_ thing you should be thinking about, all the way out here, I daresay."

"Well, I had to take a break from thinking about those bloody squeaky bedsprings in Andrei's spare room," he jokes, shifting to pull her forward under his arm.

She giggles. "Tomorrow night in Bucharest we'll have a hotel room again, dear husband, and Tanti Georgeta can complain all she likes after we go. So, what's this about _work_ , then?"

"Would it upset you if I took a transfer?"

"Depends. What sort of transfer?"

"I'd need to buckle in for another two years of training, but I've been thinking that Criminal Investigations would be a good fit for me. And there'd be a pay rise, at the end of it."

"Isn't that department a bit dangerous, love?"

Greg bends and plucks up a fat bloom of Queen Anne's lace, nearly the size of a tea saucer. When he turns to tuck it into her dark hair, her eyes catch his, wide and earnest.

"Could be," he allows, carefully adjusting the flower above her ear. "But it's what I joined up for, Dia. Not traffic tickets. I wanted to help people; I wanted to _save lives_."

"Then...you should put yourself in a position to do that," she tells him.

Greg smiles, and kisses his new wife under the vast, quiet sky. He feels a sense of relief sweeping through him, unexpected and intense.

It's as if some invisible puzzle piece has just slid into its proper place, at last.

 

\-----

 


	4. Step by Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's wonderful, truly; Greg smiles, and laughs...and desperately craves a cigarette.

  
**4\. Step by Step**  


.

 

Two more years have swept by, so filled with unrelenting work and stress that Greg can hardly believe the time is gone. During the days, he's remained on a somewhat regular patrol shift; shoehorned around that he's attended lectures and hands-on coursework in early mornings and evenings, with late-night study sessions at home whenever he could fit them in. His wife has been supportive, for the most part, helping him with quiz materials and hiding most of her instinctive revulsion at the gory photographs of corpses and blood spatter. She's put on a cheery smile and fixed him gourmet-level packed lunches, hardly complaining about his lack of spare attention to lavish upon her in return.

On the day Greg completes his final evaluations and is issued his new warrant card, it feels as if he's lifting his head above a thick bank of smog, and looking around himself for the first time in ages.

He's just passed his thirtieth birthday, and he's been made Detective Constable at last. His tireless work has paid off with a direct placement to Homicide and Serious Crime, his first choice of department; he's proud of himself, fleetingly, when he remembers to think about it. Before he begins his first full week at Scotland Yard, though, he's promised Nadia a short holiday. She insists he needs the break as much as she does, and he's still feeling too shell-shocked to find any reason for disagreement.

 

.

 

The August heat in Majorca is intense. They find lounge chairs on the beach below their resort and stretch out side by side in their swimsuits; Nadia has a hat with a wide, floppy brim, a chilled bottle of fruit juice, a tote packed with towels and sun lotion, and a cheap paperback sporting a buff male model on its cover. Greg has cheap sunglasses and an aching desire to shut off his brain, and nothing more.

"So your schedule should be easier, now, shouldn't it?" asks Nadia, breaking the comfortable silence.

Greg grunts, noncommittal. "It's bound to be. Less hours, certainly. But it likely won't be predictable—it'll change week to week, and sometimes there'll be late nights." He shifts and settles himself deeper into the lounger.

"I suppose that's all right," she says.

In the silence that follows, he slowly registers the note of uncertainty he'd heard. He tips his head to the right to face her, but doesn't open his eyes against the sun's pounding weight. "All right?"

"I just—I worry. You've been under so much stress, love, and I worry that your episodes might come back."

Greg's eyes pop open and instantly water in the brightness. His wife's pale form shimmers through his tears; beneath the shade of the hat, her face is a dark smear.

"My episodes," he parrots, dumbly.

"Ye-es..." The shadow line tilts to one side: Greg imagines an affectionate and teasing expression, but he can't clear his vision quickly enough to be sure. She continues, "You know, those times when you drop everything and run to the loo, gasping like a fish out of water? And then you come back acting like it didn't just happen?"

"It's nothing."

" _Nothing_ is a touch of athlete's foot, maybe, or a pimple on your back. _Nothing_ is when I have my period pains. _Nothing_ is getting yourself a sunburn—you know, you should really put something on before much longer..."

"Leave it, I'm fine," he mutters, levering himself up on an elbow and throwing up a hand to stop her digging into her bag. "And the other... It's not stress. It hasn't happened in a long while, for one thing; wouldn't you say I've been stressed, lately?"

"Well, obviously."

"Damn right, I bloody have been. And I haven't lost my breath _once_ , in the past year, now have I!" _Thank goodness for that,_ he adds silently. Ever since he'd managed to draw the headmaster all the way across the school campus in time to witness Sherlock's brutal treatment at the hands of his bullies, the frequency of the ripples had sharply declined. He'd still dealt with one or two incidents in the most recent school term, but nothing had taken place while he'd been at home.

Nadia makes a short, irritated noise and picks up her romance novel. "Fine; since you clearly don't want to talk about it..."

"I'm sorry love, but I really, really don't," he answers; they both lie back on the loungers, and Greg sighs softly as he tries again to relax under the press of the heavy Spanish heat.

He can sense Dia's discontent, even with his eyes shut. After a moment, he flips his hand out into the space between their chairs, palm up and open, and waits.

It's less than a minute before she gives in, taking his hand, and the knot of tension between his shoulder blades begins to ease at last.

 

.

 

Time passes: Sherlock is going to be finished with secondary school, this term.

That knowledge feels, to Greg, like more of a milestone than the events that have taken place in his own life, over the past two years. The completion of his CID training, his first days on the job, his first opportunity to process a witness, the sight of his first crime scene (and his tenth, and his twentieth), the pub night his fellow officers dragged him out on to celebrate his first anniversary at the Yard...they've all been memorable in their own ways. Nevertheless, he still finds himself thinking of Sherlock's life more frequently than his own, an automatic reflex in thoughtful moments whether his mood swings to the good or bad.

Greg knows that the kid is safe: there have been practically no ripples in the past two years. That doesn't reassure him as much as he figures it should. Yes, he's pleased at the thought that his charge has survived childhood, and apparently grown out of the ridiculous risk-taking...but he feels unexpectedly empty, when he realises that his years of constant watchfulness may be at an end.

Without the element of danger in Sherlock's life, a familiar spark goes missing from Greg's. He takes up smoking—not on purpose; at first it's just something he falls into when he's out with the guys after work, but something about filling his lungs with smoke is a strange comfort.

He feels less alone in his head, when he's coughing.

 

.

 

One April night, very late, a ripple wakes Greg and sends him stumbling quietly out into the hall, careful not to disturb his sleeping wife. The vision coalesces slowly, sinking him down into the airless depths in a way that seems oddly gentler than usual; when it resolves, it shows him Sherlock sitting alone in a study room. He's taller than when Greg saw him last, and less scrawny, holding himself with a self-aware grace that seems new and fragile. Greg eagerly soaks in the sight of him, even as he searches automatically for clues to the situation.

The young man has no books or other materials; he's simply staring into space, expressionless and silent. Greg hovers, confused, waiting for a clear sign of danger. None appears.

_What's wrong, kid? How can I help?_

Of course there is no response. In all these years, not once has Greg been able to connect directly with him; he presumes it's an unwritten rule of their mysterious link, that the protected should remain entirely untouchable, unaware of his invisible lifeline.

Searching the dormitory, quick and determined, Greg seeks out one of the nicer boys he remembers. Tall with pale ash-brown hair, brisk and persuasive but never violent: he's _pushed_ this classmate to break up fights before. It's been quite a while, and this youth's appearance has changed somewhat as well, but it doesn't take long to find him. Even asleep, his presence _tastes_ familiar to Greg, somehow, although that isn't quite the word he's looking for. Nudging the boy awake, Greg guides him to the study room and gets him to open the door.

"Victor," says Sherlock, hoarsely, as the scene begins to fade out.

Greg worries over it for three days.

 

.

 

When May rolls around Greg's been at the Yard for only twenty months, shuttling between the various teams in the Homicide department. It's good work, varied and interesting, and he settles into it well.

One day, he's dispatched as a support officer for a double murder that's taken place in a cramped and severely cluttered home. As he makes his way carefully into the messy scene, the Detective Inspector in charge takes notice of him and motions him over.

"You there. You're new to Homicide?"

"Been with the department about a year and a half, sir," Greg answers. "DC Lestrade." He's not surprised that DI Parsons doesn't recognise him; the gruff, hook-nosed man is known for his laser focus on casework and his inattention to the lowly constables manning the police tape.

"Well, Lestrade, you were looking sharp just now, coming in."

"Uh...thank you?"

"Looked like you saw something," Parsons presses, his eyes narrowed intently. "So what do _you_ think happened here?"

"Sir?" Greg's taken completely off guard, but he shakes himself and quickly gives an answer. "Um. Well, I was just thinking how it looks like the wife might have come in and interrupted the act, while her husband was being killed."

"Come in?"

"Yeah, through the back room there. See?" Leaning back, Greg points to the open doorway at the rear of the room, almost completely hidden in the shadows of a tall stack of plastic storage containers crammed full of hoarded newspapers. It isn't the main egress to the rest of the house, but the position of the woman's body seems right for it. Greg might not have noticed the doorway straight off, himself, if not for his ingrained habit of immediately searching out all available exits and escape routes.

Parsons makes a surprised noise. "Good eyes, Constable."

"Thank you, sir."

The inspector is silent after that, and after a moment's attentive waiting Greg presumes he's been dismissed to his original duties; he nods politely and begins to pick his way back across the room.

"You like your job, Lestrade?" asks Parsons, behind him.

"I do, sir."

"You pay good attention. None of the _other_ DCs are minding the details like that, I'll wager. Keep it up, and you'll find yourself rising in the ranks."

Greg stops and looks back, working his jaw a little as he scrambles to find a suitable response that sounds neither shocked nor proud, but the DI has already turned away and called out for his sergeant to attend him.

 

.

 

The promotion is announced in February of the following year, and Greg dutifully spreads the word. Mum breaks down crying at the news, and at first it's distressingly unclear whether they're tears of joy. Corrie crows loudly into his ear on their transatlantic call, prompting her newborn girl Gabriela to contribute an answering wail. Nadia and her family throw a party for him, with a long hand-painted banner hung across the dining room wall: CONGRATULATIONS DETECTIVE SERGEANT LESTRADE.

It's wonderful, truly; Greg smiles, and laughs...and desperately craves a cigarette.

 

\-----

 


	5. Holding Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little common sense shouldn't be too much to expect from someone so intelligent, should it?

  
**5\. Holding Back**  


.

 

It's easy to excuse a child for heedless behaviour; Greg was fairly rambunctious himself, up until about age sixteen. He remembers how easy it was to get carried away in the moment.

With Sherlock in university, though, Greg feels entirely justified in cursing him for what is _clearly_ empty-headed recklessness.

It may have been Greg's habitual attentiveness that had set him on the path to his promotion, but having the habit and _needing_ it are two different things. He's learned the difference quite quickly; the first of the new ripples surprised him just two weeks before he'd begun his position as sergeant. In the six months since then, he's had to readjust to the continual awareness of risk, something that he'd lost touch with over the better years.

At first, Greg had battled with a guilty sense of relief at the return of the ripples. They meant danger, yes, but _avertable_ danger; they were his only window into the kid's world, after all. Sherlock had been ever-present in his life for over eighteen years, like a secret imaginary friend—well, no, nothing like an imaginary friend at all, really. It's perfectly understandable, at any rate, that seeing Sherlock once more should stir up mixed feelings.

Now, it's safe to say he isn't relieved any longer. In fact, he's starting to get well and truly angry. It isn't as if the first term at university is generally such a threat to life and limb! Greg had done his time at Hendon, rather than attend uni, but he gathers that many of the same pitfalls apply to those students as had applied to him and his cohorts in police training. Young people out from under the thumbs of their parents, enjoying the new freedom of drink and debauchery, were sure to risk themselves in some small way, now and again. But this?

This isn't a young man out to party. This is someone so wrapped up in himself that everything around him falls by the wayside.

After the fifth time Greg finds himself called to steer a lorry from the kid's path, he stays out late at the pub. Sitting by himself, he frowns his way through a few pints, silently grumbling at his ridiculous lot in life.

_Who just walks out into the street, like that? A bleeding idiot, that's who! Fuck's sake, if everyone were so lost in their own heads as Sherlock fucking Holmes, the roads would be a mess of fatalities every damned day!_

A busty blonde has her eye on Greg, and he doesn't even notice at first, he's so caught up in his self-pity. He catches on, finally, when she makes a pass by the little table where he sits alone; she pretends to stumble, twisting one of her pretty stiletto heels and bumping gently into his arm. He stirs himself automatically to make sure she's not really hurt, but then he notices the rest of her body language; smiling politely, almost apologetically, he unlaces his fingers and raises his left hand to bring his beer up for a deliberate swig. Thankfully, the woman decides to steer clear after she sees the ring he's placed on display for her.

He watches her go, momentarily amused, but it doesn't take long before his mind returns to the incident that had driven him to drink alone in the first place.

_I swear, it's like he fucking knows he's got someone watching over his shoulder. He's got no bloody concept of self-preservation! One of these times I should just go on and let something happen to him—teach him a sodding lesson about paying attention—_

That stops him cold, wide-eyed and shaken at the audacity of his own thought. Of _course_ he would never, _never_ do such a thing; God, just carrying that image through to its conclusion makes his stomach flip and squirm.

 

.

 

Once, it was superstition that held Greg back from searching out Sherlock Holmes' records, looking the name up in the databases to which he has easy access. Lately, it's probably more like stubbornness.

The location of the boarding school that Greg had never sought out may have remained a mystery, but now he knows Sherlock is in London. He's not familiar enough with the features of the various universities to tell which one—and damn it all, he doesn't _want_ to—but there have been obvious city landmarks in many of the ripples.

Far from making him curious, these fragments of knowledge only make Greg want to dig in his heels and save his ignorance. At the very least, the thought of crossing paths with his charge gives him an instinctive shiver. If there are rules regarding the use of this gift, they're not something he can consult. He knows he needs to trust his gut—it's all he has—and if his gut is telling him to avoid making contact, that's what he'll do.

 

.

 

At the age of thirty-three, Greg hasn't yet budged on the decision he made when he was eighteen. No kids.

As for Nadia, after five years of marriage, she's started to waver under inquiries from her family members. She begins to float the idea into their conversations over a period of months, casually at first and then not so casually.

By now, she's seen him in his ripples time and time again, no matter how carefully Greg's worked to hide them. It's a delicate balance, writing them off so she doesn't worry overmuch while simultaneously using them as a subtle excuse for not changing his mind. He tries not to overuse the implication that it's a medical condition; still, when necessary he chooses strategic moments to wonder aloud if his "episodes" might prove hereditary. It's lying, and he _hates_ lying, especially to Dia, but he's had to hone his skills in deception, over the years. And at the same time it's oddly truthful: what if he brought a child into the world, and that child ended up saddled with a duty like his? Rewarding as it sometimes seems, he wouldn't force it on anyone else.

In early spring, after the subject has gone around yet again in a particularly intense debate—not quite an argument, but close—Greg wakes in the middle of the night, pulling in a deep breath out of panicked reflex and finding it unimpeded.

 _Just a nightmare,_ he tells himself, wrapping his arms tightly over his chest. _Just a nightmare—fucking hell..._ He tilts his head towards the ceiling and breathes some more.

"Mm," Nadia mumbles beside him. She lifts her head from the pillow and reaches out to touch his arm; it's shaking. "Greg? A'right, love?"

"Y-yeah," he manages. "Sorry, go back to sleep. I'm fine."

She makes an incoherent response, already slipping from her brief wakefulness.

In the dream, a faceless team of doctors had showed Greg scans of the massive brain tumour that had been causing his continuing seizures...along with undeniable proof: "Sherlock Holmes" was merely a persistent hallucination. A dangerous symptom of his condition.

There is no way he'll be giving in to the urge to search for Sherlock, anytime soon. That would only give his nightmare the opportunity to become real.

 

.

 

Greg considers himself lucky that DI Parsons had been the one to request him, after his advancement. Of all the division's inspectors, Richard Parsons is the easiest to work around. He sincerely doesn't care what his subordinates are doing, so long as they're ready with sharp answers when prompted, and jump when he gives an order. Greg's able to slip away as often as he needs to, and while it's possible one or two of the DCs have had occasion to wonder, Parsons remains basically oblivious to his strange behaviour.

That's a _very_ good thing, as it happens; Sherlock's second and third years at uni have turned out to be a real trial by fire.

There are the occasional brawls in back alleys, outside pubs, which smack suspiciously of purposeful instigation. Sherlock seems to be looking for trouble, using a talent for insult to practise his fighting skills. It's good that he learns, Greg supposes; a little self-defence wouldn't have hurt anything in years past. Still, he's a wisp of a young man compared to some of his indignant opponents, and Greg always ends up intervening sooner or later.

There's the week during which Sherlock is carrying out an experiment on the roof of the administration building—something disgusting-looking involving decomposition in sunlight. Greg repeatedly stops the custodial staff on each shift from locking the windows and stranding Sherlock in his precarious position.

Then there's the week Sherlock has apparently decided he's bored with his lectures, as well as bored with stairs; he takes to improving his skills at free-climbing various buildings around the university, for reasons incomprehensible. It's an _incredibly_ difficult and frustrating week, as seen from Greg's perspective...thankfully, things calm down somewhat once the time for final exams draws nigh.

Greg can only pray that Sherlock will find something a little less heart attack-inducing upon which to focus his insatiable intellect, once he's no longer hindered by the tedious limitations of being a student.

A little common sense shouldn't be too much to expect from someone so intelligent, should it?

 

\-----

 


	6. Family Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's meant to be happy, and so he is. Even when he sometimes really, really isn't.

  
**6\. Family Ties**   


.

 

For months on end following Sherlock's time at university, there are no ripples.

Greg, now thirty-five, briefly entertains the thought that the younger man might decide on further study; he dismisses it right away. One might expect a decrease in safe behaviour, in a young man newly free of responsibility...but Greg thinks he understands, by now, that the most dangerous times for Sherlock Holmes come when he feels trapped within rules and routine.

As Greg's lungs remain under his own control, week after week, he begins to give more of his focus to the less secretive aspects of his life. A respite is an opportunity to buckle down on the job, working hard to earn DI Parsons' continued approval.

At home, things are good. Nadia's stopped bringing up the ongoing debate over children so frequently, and in gratitude Greg is making an effort to recapture the romance in their marriage. She's just been made a managing partner in her catering company, so she's away from home more, too; he takes her out for dinner, and dancing, whenever their schedules line up.

He leaves small gifts and silly notes around their flat for her to find. She writes short love poems on the waxed paper, when she packs sandwiches for him to carry to work, and she draws little hearts in the steam on the bathroom mirror. As winter approaches, sometimes they communicate solely through these sweet gestures for entire weeks, too busy to connect; sometimes she wakes him in the middle of the night, and they enthusiastically make up for lost time.

 

.

 

When Christmas rolls around, there's a special treat: Corrie and Patrick fly in from the States with the kids, to stay for three weeks. Greg and Nadia each manage to work magic with their respective schedules, arranging to join the newly-arrived visitors in Bristol from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day, and suddenly the old Lestrade home is packed like it hasn't been in years, full to bursting with life and noise. Mum is thrilled, industriously organising meals with Nadia's assistance, and spoiling her two grandchildren at every possible opportunity.

Pat pulls Greg aside to talk, while the ladies are busy singing Christmas carols with the kids. He confesses that he's searching for a work opportunity that would let him bring the family back to England. "Corrie really misses you guys," he says. "It's been good, living near my Mom and Dad—the kids get a lot of attention—but with Margaret living alone so long, we worry."

"Dia and I visit as often as we can," Greg tells his brother-in-law. "I'd give my left ear to bring Mum into London, where we could keep an eye on her, but she loves this old house too much!"

"Yeah, we know. It's a big old place, though. If I could swing a position here in Bristol, she'd almost surely take us in...but that's a pipe dream. Assuming I _can_ get a transfer, it'll almost definitely be London. Maybe Cambridge. What's the housing market been like, lately?"

Greg shakes his head, smiling. "Not my area. But if you think this is really happening, I can look into it for you—one of my old mates went into real estate."

"Right, I'll let you know. Just, don't say anything yet, okay Greg? I don't want anyone getting their hopes up."

 

.

 

Gabriela is going to be three years old, come February, and Michael has just turned ten that October. The two of them are already a great team. Mikey totes Gaby around on his shoulders and makes her squeal with laughter, and Gaby uses her prodigious talents of persuasion to wheedle sweets from all the adults, which she shares freely with her big brother.

"Reminds me of when you were small," Corrie says fondly, elbowing Greg as they watch her children playing a nonsense game under the dining table.

"I wasn't near as cute," he replies.

"Oh, you _were_. Especially in that little corduroy dress, with the bow in your hair..."

"You promised me you'd never speak of that again!"

"Can't help it," she protests, laughing when he pulls a face. "I was _eight_. Now I'm forty. The sight of you in ribbons is about the only solid memory I've still got from that long ago!"

"Not _my_ fault if your childhood wasn't memorable," Greg teases, and she pushes at his arm with a rude grin of her own.

She gets up from the sofa to refill her wine, pausing in the next room to giggle at something with Dia, and Greg stays behind. He finds himself trying to recall his own early memories. Aside from the dress-up incident, and a few other stories that have become family anecdotes, he realises with some surprise that he doesn't have all that solid a grasp on his own childhood, either. The time before his thirteenth year seems a foggy blur; after that, everything stands out in sharp contrasts, fading into obscurity in between the confusing adrenalin bursts of the early ripples.

_What is this life I've been living?_ he asks the house of his youth, staring up towards the ceiling in a brief pocket of quiet. _What could I have been, without this—without Sherlock?_

_If it were taken away now...would there be anything left I could call my own?_

 

.

 

Two weeks into the new year, after Corrie's family has spent a final few days enjoying London, it's time for Greg and Nadia to accompany them to the airport. The last round of goodbyes leaves all the adults a bit misty-eyed, excepting perhaps Pat, who's got his attention focused on wrangling everyone into the right line.

On the cab ride back home, Nadia is unusually silent. Greg unlocks the door and lets her pass ahead of him, and she goes straight to the kitchen. She pours herself a large glass of water, and hands him a bottle of beer without his asking; he takes it unquestioningly, and they stand together near the sink, drinking.

Reaching out, he rubs Nadia's shoulders with his free hand, lost in thoughts of his sister: she'd looked so content, so pleased with her lot. Safe, and happy, like someone without secrets to keep.

Finally, Nadia interrupts his contemplation with an observation of her own. "All this bluster of yours, all these years, about not wanting kids...you're _terrified_ , aren't you love?"

Greg makes a noncommittal sound, tightening and releasing his hand in answer.

"I watched you today," she continues, "holding Gaby after she fell asleep; you acted like she was made of spun glass!"

"She may as well be. She's still so _little_." He can't help reciting the litany of remembered hazards, in his head. _Choking, and rivers; plug sockets, cupboards, and stairs; roads and roofs and snakes and stoves..._

"But you're so good, with her and Mikey both. _Trust_ me, Greg, you'd make a great father."

He shrugs, unseen behind her, and finishes off his beer. "I dunno, Dia. I mean, I just don't feel very _paternal_ , you know? I wouldn't have the first idea what to do. But I suppose anything's possible."

She places her empty drinking glass in the sink, and brings her hand up to meet his at her shoulder. "Well, I hate to break this to you, darling, but you're going to end up finding out, anyway..." She tips her head downward, deliberately, and closes her fingers delicately around his.

It takes Greg an embarrassing handful of seconds to put the pieces together. His mouth goes dry, when he does. "You're telling me...you're..."

"Mm-hmm." Nadia has frozen under his hands, careful and tentative. She's not turning to look at him, instead waiting silently for his reaction.

"Oh my God. _Nadia_ , love."

Just like that, his world has shifted on its axis; everything he sees is tinted by a new layer of worry and hope and outright _fear_. Somewhere in his core, he's illogically certain it's not meant to be—certain that the God or Fate or twisted force that _chose_ him for his duty had intended that he remain tied to that duty alone.

And yet...the thought of a baby, with Dia's dark hair and his own brown eyes...the thought of having his own flesh and blood, to hold in his arms...some little boy or girl who might have the chance to keep their breath for their own...

He's meant to be happy, and so he is. Even when he sometimes really, really isn't.

 

\-----

 


	7. Addiction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wants to blame Fate. It's tempting to blame Sherlock. In the end, he keeps the blame for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING on this chapter for loss of pregnancy.

  
**7\. Addiction**  


.

 

In the weeks following Nadia's big reveal, Greg isn't sure what's expected of him. About the only thing he knows for sure is that he's not supposed to tell anyone, not yet; that's nowhere near the problem for him that his wife might expect. She seems to think he'll be spilling the news at the Yard, buying celebratory rounds for the guys after work and calling his sister to crow about it.

Nadia doesn't know how good her husband is at keeping secrets.

In truth, telling people is the furthest thing from Greg's mind. He knows he'll have to, eventually—it's one of the many worries on his fast-growing list, along with trying to determine whether he's been saving enough money, and wondering if their current home is suitable for a child. Nadia is certainly used to his nervous stance on the concept of children—she's so far been fairly forgiving of the fact that he perhaps hasn't reacted in the manner of a perfectly supportive spouse. But Greg still fears that in spreading the word of their growing family, he won't be able to act _properly_ excited about it. Will people notice his guilty ambivalence, and gossip about the likely state of his marriage?

"Darling," Nadia warns him one Monday evening, drawing him out of these private thoughts on his way in the door of their flat, "you positively reek of cigarettes! If you don't quit smoking, you realise, I won't be allowing you near the baby."

Greg's eyes widen as he turns, but she wears an expression that reassures him she's at least partially joking. He's fully aware that it might be a smaller percentage than he'd like, for all that.

"Sorry, love; it's just, it helps with stress, y'know? Work."

She wrinkles her nose and tips her head. "Look, I'm not saying it's worse than your coming home smelling of corpses..."

Three weeks past, there had been a nasty scene Greg had helped handle, at which the body hadn't been discovered until it was well past the early stages of decomposition. After working the case for five hours, Greg had been desensitised enough to forget the odour clinging to his clothing...and when he'd returned home, Nadia had reacted with a rather spectacular emptying of her newly sensitive stomach. Greg suspects he won't live it down anytime soon.

"I've got months, yet, don't I? I can cut back," he insists.

"You'd better. It's a filthy habit, anyway; I wish you'd never started. Your Mum's coming up, weekend after next, and I'm thinking we'll have Mama and Baba in for dinner, too—perfect time for us to make the announcement. What if I go out tomorrow and buy some of those patches for you, love?"

"Yeah, all right. I guess I can try that." Greg smiles tightly and pulls her close, tucking her head in over his shoulder and stroking her glossy hair. "You know I'll do anything for you. For you, and for the little one..."

God knows, he's tried to talk himself around to being truly happy about the pregnancy. It's just hard to shake the doubt; he's tense, now, all the time, and smoking certainly helps to take the edge off. However, the new concerns he's dealing with aren't the only reason he's found himself running through smokes at such a rate.

At this point, it's been eight full months since Greg has been caught up in a ripple.

 

.

 

Normally, DI Parsons is a detached and cerebral supervisor. Greg finds Parsons' intent focus upon the cases to be admirable; the man clearly cares far more about finding justice than faffing about with paperwork and office politics. It's a mindset with which Greg readily identifies. Still, as noble as it may be, it does make things difficult, at times, for the subordinate officers on his team. Parsons is equally as sparing with his admonishments as with his praise, only reacting verbally when provoked by extraordinarily good work—or bad.

Because of this, most of Greg's work takes place in a continual state of isolation, and careful self-sufficiency; he tends to regard his days on the job as an extension of his training. He runs through the evidence in his head, choosing what he sees as the best course of action, and then he waits to see what Parsons does. Much of the time, lately, he's not far wrong.

It's Wednesday afternoon. As the chill February sun begins its descent, Greg is squatting a few metres from the gravelly shoreline of the Thames, just north of the Nelson Dock Pier. He tips his head low, trying to decide if there's enough disturbance in the stones and mud to denote possible dragging marks from the area of the Hilton's northern service access, while Frank Drake stands interviewing a member of the hotel management somewhere behind him. Farther downriver, constables Cartwright and Newels are working on photographing the area where the body was found.

DI Parsons had left the scene to answer his phone, around the time the victim had been taken away; now, he returns and briskly calls out, "Lestrade. With me."

Greg jerks his hand away from his arm—this is his first day wearing a nicotine patch, and he hadn't expected it to itch—and he hops into motion, jogging up alongside the DI who's already striding away from the others again. "Sir?"

"I'll be leaving shortly; I've got an old friend's funeral service to attend. Won't be back 'til tomorrow evening, so I want you in charge of this case, while I'm gone."

"Me? But—Sergeant Drake is senior..."

"Did you hear me calling for Sergeant Drake? No. I'm telling _you_. I think it's high time you live up to your potential, Lestrade."

"I'm not sure I follow you, Inspector?"

"Stop pussyfooting about. You've got a theory on this one, don't you? Come on," Parsons urges, "you've been on my team for nearly three _years_ ; I know you, I know how you work! _You_ watch like a hawk, and you never stop thinking. I want you to take your theory on this one, and run it down; get us a new lead to work with. DCI Edwards is on the hunt for a candidate, and I want to show him what you've got to offer the division."

It's unexpected praise, and it sends a skittish flush of pride through Greg. He hadn't considered the possibility of advancing again, at least not this soon. He's been with the Metropolitan Police for over sixteen years, true, but only five and a half of those were spent in Investigations. Although his promotion to Sergeant had come relatively speedily, he'd assumed that his continuing career would be a long, slow climb.

If what DI Parsons is hinting at is really the direction of things to come, then it's not to be slow, not at all. His wife is ten weeks pregnant, and now Edwards might decide to send him up to Inspector...it seems as though the pace of things is beginning to speed far out of his control.

 

.

 

The patches aren't great, but after about a week's rocky adjustment, Greg is managing to resist most of his worst cravings. The riverbank case has wrapped up successfully, and although Parsons has returned to his usual taciturn behaviour, Greg can tell that he's pleased with the outcome. A long day of paperwork follows the arrest, with Greg handling the lion's share of it—another facet of his work being presented for the Chief Inspector's consideration; Parsons wants to point up Greg's attention to detail, and his ability to follow through start to finish. It's flattering, and exciting, but it's a lot of pressure on top of his other secret concerns, and with Nadia's planned family announcement to come in less than three days...by the time he leaves the Yard, Greg is battling a severe need for a cigarette.

 _Maybe just one,_ he tells himself, stepping out of the Tube station a few streets away from his flat. _It's windy, tonight; Dia might not even notice, and besides, I can't possibly be expected to quit entirely in only a week!_

Resolved to allow himself this one transgression, Greg detours towards a corner shop where he can buy what he needs. Ten steps from the door, a sudden gust of wind pushes into his face—and all at once, his lungs hitch painfully and his vision begins to darken at the edges.

 _Fuck, Sherlock,_ Greg thinks, surprised; clenching his fists in concentration, he hurries into the shadows of the alley beside the shop, grateful to find it empty.

He leans into the wall there, already gasping in an uneven cadence. The image that rises up before the chipped brickwork and its wallpaper of peeling advertisement posters is brightly lit: there's a standing lamp with an exposed bulb, and a dingy-looking sofa, and a ragged, stained swath of ugly carpeting.

In this unattractive setting, Greg sees four people. One woman, lying on her back on the floor with an arm thrown over her eyes; one man slumped over at the right end of the sofa; one man standing by a small window, hands in pockets as he looks out. None of them look very clean or respectable. Sherlock, in contrast, is better-dressed, silently going about his own business in the opposite seat with no apparent concern for the others.

That business involves carefully nudging aside the rolled up sleeve of his button-down shirt, revealing the edge of a rubber tie, and picking up an already prepped syringe resting in his lap.

It's nearly a physical shock for Greg. He'd never considered Sherlock stupid enough to get involved with drugs.

_So I'm meant to get one of these people to stop him taking them, then._

Apparently not—before Greg is able to shift his vantage point at all, Sherlock has already pushed the needle home in a single swift movement.

 _No,_ Greg protests silently. _Damn it, you're an idiot, but you're better than this..._

The vision holds steady, and his experience of the ripples' physical sensations tells him the true danger point has not yet arrived—which makes no sense. He waits, confused and angry, and as he does he studies Sherlock's reaction to the hit: relief, but not surprise. When Greg pushes his eyes in to look closely, he's dismayed to find enough older needle tracks to count on both hands.

_This? This is what you've been doing, after uni, while I've been chucking along on my own, thinking you were bloody safe?_

He's so furious he feels ill. He'd like nothing more than to shake that beatific fucking smile from Sherlock's face.

Greg is still so focused on his anger that he almost misses what's happening, until the man at the window turns and steps close to lean in over Sherlock's relaxed, vulnerable form. As the man gently prepares to slip Sherlock's wallet free, Greg has to scramble to find his _push_ —the junkie on the sofa is insensible and impossible to move, but the robber is gripping a switchblade in his other hand. Greg sees the trembling in his fingers, and senses that at the least twitch of response from Sherlock, he won't hesitate to take a vicious stab.

 _Sodding hell,_ he thinks, and swoops down to _push_ the girl on the carpet. She's high, too, but to a lesser extent; with the extra force of will provided by Greg's protective rage, it's enough to make her move, sit up, speak...

 

.

 

After the ripple is over, Greg skips the shop and the cigarettes, instead stalking off in the opposite direction of home. He's got no destination in mind; he simply needs to burn off his frustration.

He'd thought he understood how the ripples functioned, but tonight has called everything he knew into doubt.

_What fucking good is it, if I don't get the opportunity to help? It isn't fair!_

How could it be right, that Greg should be called in to save his charge from any and every direct physical threat—falling, fighting, snakebite, chemical burns, the lot—and yet, he isn't brought to stop the boy _injecting drugs_ into his arms? As far as he's concerned, the appropriate time to save Sherlock from the dangers of drug addiction is _before_ the first needle goes in! But apparently, the forces in control of Greg's gift don't see things that way.

As he walks, Greg tries to wrap his head around possible reasons for the difference. The best he can manage is to imagine himself and Sherlock as playing pieces in some kind of crazy cosmic chess game. _So maybe, if whatever it is will cause death or irreversible harm in, say, three moves, I get pulled in...and anything slower or less direct than that, they can't predict it? Or they're not allowed to use me? Like...when those school bullies started messing with him, but I wasn't called 'til it got bad?_

It's an explanation, of sorts, but not a terribly good one. And making assumptions about the identity or motivations of the higher powers that rule Greg's life always puts an uncomfortable squirming into his stomach; he shies away from thinking too hard on it, usually.

Understanding that he has no real choice in the matter doesn't help Greg feel like any less of a failure.

 

.

 

After nearly two hours, Greg's anger has cooled, leaving him drained and hollow. He doesn't want to go home—he doesn't want to be around anyone—but it's getting late, and walking so long has made him sore and tired. His mobile phone hasn't rung while he's been out, so he knows he hasn't got himself into trouble there; at the very least, if his wife is upset that he's missed supper, she's decided to wait 'til he gets home to tell him about it. With a sigh, he turns his steps homeward, trying to put the evening's upset behind him before Nadia has a chance to read it on his face.

The flat is quiet, when he opens the door. Lights are on in empty rooms; Greg calls out as he hangs his coat. "Sorry I'm late, love. Bad day at work."

There's no response. He walks through to the kitchen, looking for evidence of a cold supper she may have set aside for him. If there is food waiting, it's already been put into the fridge; he spots a plate sitting out with a few dinner rolls, though. He snags one eagerly, suddenly hungrier than he'd realised.

Greg hasn't taken off his shoes on his way into the flat. He knows Nadia prefers that he leave them by the door, but he doesn't even notice he's still got them on until one of the soles catches on something tacky.

Mouth full of yeasty roll, he lifts his foot to see—the crackling, sticky sound seems loud in the silent room. He's stepped in a wide puddle of something; it looks like orange juice, an hours-old spill mostly dried. The glass lies abandoned, untouched where it's rolled to rest against the base of the cabinets.

He stops chewing.

"Nadia," he mutters around his dry mouthful. Swallowing with some difficulty, he turns to leave the room. "Nadia?"

Greg mounts the stairs with trepidation, ears pricked for a response that doesn't come. The flat is _so_ quiet. His heartbeat begins to flutter in his throat.

Light shines from beneath the bathroom door, spilling across the darkness of the hallway.

"Nadia? You in there?"

Ear to the wood, he can just make out a tiny sound, a hitch of breath. He tries the knob—locked.

"Nadia? Darling, are you okay? C'mon, say something. Nadia. _Nadia_. You're scaring me, love. Say something, or I'll break the _door_ down—"

"Don't," comes the response; so soft. It sounds wrong, broken. She's never this way. Even at her most upset, she always speaks out loud and clear.

"Dia, love. What's happened? Open the door, will you?"

There's no answer from her, only more breathing. Perhaps a tiny whimper. Greg's got his face, his hands, _everything_ pressed up against the door as if he could _will_ himself through the solid wood. The day's second rush of adrenalin is burning through his veins. It feels different, when he can breathe through it. He thinks he might be sick.

"Please," he begs, falling heedlessly to kneel at the base of the door. "Please, Dia, just tell me _what's wrong_!"

At last, he hears a long, shuddering inhale—he copies it, instinctively—and then she chokes out: "It's gone."

He doesn't understand. And then, he does.

 

.

 

A week later, he picks up a rock-hard dinner roll from the hallway floor.

 

.

 

He wants to blame Fate. It's tempting to blame Sherlock. In the end, he keeps the blame for himself.

 

\-----

 


	8. A Matter of Timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wonders how everything in his life has become so complicated. It hasn't been simple in a long, long time.

  
**8\. A Matter of Timing**   


.

 

Greg Lestrade receives his promotion to Detective Inspector in September of 1999. It would never have happened so soon, surely, if Gregson and Pryce hadn't both taken their retirement in that same year—it seems to Greg that his relative inexperience as a detective should carry more weight than his years of service on the police force. But whatever the extenuating circumstances, DCI Edwards' final decision is swift and unchallenged.

On the day the announcement comes out, Greg is reluctant to tell his wife. He _is_ pleased by the change, of course—it's a step he's looked forward to taking in his career for quite some time. But his home, right now...well, it's not exactly a great place to bring happy news.

Their baby should have been due, sometime this very week.

When Greg opens the door at the end of the day, he finds the flat silent and dark. The last he'd checked, Nadia didn't have any dinner events on her work schedule. He briefly wonders if she's gone out with a friend, perhaps. Or maybe she's stayed out late to sit and think in some pub, alone, musing over the redux of the depression she'd already fought her way through that spring; that'd be more _his_ style, though.

No, there's a simpler explanation.

He pads upstairs in sock feet, and gently opens the bedroom door. No lights are burning here, either, but Nadia has opened the drapes to the patchy glow of moon and streetlamps; Greg can see the shape of her, curled on her side beneath the covers.

Greg says nothing as he crosses the room. Her eyes are open, a dark glitter visible from the shadows, but she doesn't track his movement beyond a bare flicker. When he slips onto the bed behind her, fully clothed, she shifts only slightly.

Bringing his hand to rest very lightly on her shoulder, he licks his lips and tries to find words to express his emotions. In the heavy silence of Nadia's mourning, he can't seem to figure out how to speak, or what to say.

_I understand_ —no. Whatever he's feeling, _he_ wasn't the one who had experienced the early stirrings of new life, whose body had begun changing to bring it forth. Greg already knows he can never, never _completely_ understand.

_I wish it had been different_ —it's a pointless sentiment; of course he does, who wouldn't? It brings with it, too, the memory of his years of arguing against having children, and that's the last thing he wants to remind her of.

_I want to make it better_ —another laughably useless offer. None of his trained skills, his natural talents, his inexplicable _abilities_ can be of any use, here. The loss is an indelible mark; though it may fade, eventually, he can't do a thing to make it disappear.

"I love you," he finally manages to whisper into her hair, his voice choked with the force of everything he's holding back. Even that feels inadequate.

Nadia pulls in a deep breath, and after an endless still moment she lifts her hand to meet his; when their fingers intertwine, Greg sighs in relief.

He stays there with her the rest of the night in silent vigil, without supper, eventually falling into troubled sleep with his arms wrapped carefully around her.

 

.

 

Over the next few weeks, Nadia begins to return to herself, somewhat, bouncing back towards the same brisk, focused energy and lighthearted sensuality for which he'd fallen in love with her thirteen years before. Still, Greg treads carefully; it's about a month—right around her thirty-sixth birthday, actually—before he brings her the news of his promotion. For a few days he relates weeks-old stories about being assigned his first subordinates, and settling into his first office, as if they've just happened. He knows he's become a better liar, over the years, and the bulk of what he's telling her is true...but he's a bit surprised that she doesn't seem to suspect his bending of the truth.

She's treated him like a different person, it seems, ever since that night in early March. And although she never says anything outright to place blame on him, Greg still feels _intensely_ guilty.

It may have been merely a coincidence of timing, a medical fluke, and if he were anyone else he might be inclined to believe that. But Greg is undeniably something unique...and he can't stop thinking about the deep-seated misgivings he'd had from the very first moment. No matter how he tries to view the situation pragmatically, he comes back around to the ripples.

Had his potential child been taken from him purposefully, by the decree of whatever forces tied him to Sherlock?

Had the use of his gift, that fateful evening, caused repercussions of energy that could affect Nadia's fragile womb from two streets away?

Or had the sheer psychic force of Greg's _doubt_ been enough to make the pregnancy fail? He truly can't comprehend the source of his ability; perhaps he possesses greater power than he knows...

No matter the reason, even if there really was no reason whatsoever but random chance, none of these painful thoughts plaguing Greg are at all possible for him to share. It's just more to add to the ever-growing pile of secrets and lies that sits malignant in the centre of his marriage bed.

 

.

 

Greg is mostly used to the unpredictable fluctuations of the ripples, after so many years. Dangerous times are followed by quiet periods, long and increasingly ominous; he always tries for as long as he can not to relax his guard. After a point, though, it's impossible to stay alert and focused on the likely perils in Sherlock's invisible life. The awareness of risk inevitably subsides, adding its particular flavour to the background noise of Greg's permanent worries.

He wonders if this is just an automatic coping strategy. If he were to dwell on the situation day after day, fixating on the unknowable and the unpredictable, he'd surely cause himself a heart attack or something before very long.

In his first year as a DI, the prevailing worry is drug overdose. For months, the knowledge of what Sherlock had gotten into stays with him, echoes of that remembered shock continually present like a persistent toothache. He practically jumps at shadows, sometimes, he feels so tense and unhappy. But the expected ripples don't come...and though he's unwilling to believe his charge has kicked the habit, eventually he allows himself to hope that the respite _might_ mean more than controlled, continued addiction.

The first breath of spring is just beginning to spread across the city, but Greg isn't out enjoying the fresh air—nor the repugnant breeze of a murder scene, as it happens. His last case had ended the day before in a complicated triple arrest, the execution of which had unfortunately incurred some property damage; now Greg has to sit and type up the required paperwork, fleshing out a final report based on his handwritten notes and those of his team. He's finding it difficult to stay focused, though, with speculation about Sherlock repeatedly rearing its head.

There's a knock on the door of his closet-sized office; frowning, Greg drops a finger onto the file to keep his place in Sergeant Oliver Berkeley's untidy scribble. "Come in," he calls, hoping it's Berkeley come to help decipher the mess.

DI Parsons enters instead, glancing around at Greg's cramped quarters with a slight smile. "Afternoon, Lestrade. Thought I'd see how you were getting on."

"I'm not doing too badly, sir," he answers.

"Heard about the case you've just closed. Good catch, that, getting all three Braithwaite brothers in one shot. You should be pleased."

"Don't I look pleased?"

"Not so much, no. You look like you're waiting for the blade to hit the chopping block," Parsons tells him. "Stress too much for you, after all?"

"No, it's fine," Greg says quickly. "I can handle it. It's not work that's got me down."

The older man tilts his head, and his voice softens in understanding. "Your wife, still?"

Greg nods reluctantly, his lips tightening. After Nadia's loss, and before the promotion, he'd been so obviously troubled that Parsons had drawn him aside for a rare heart-to-heart; he'd confessed the miscarriage but nothing else, of course. Of everyone at the Yard, Richard Parsons is the only one in whom Greg's confided, and he doesn't even know half of the truth.

"Buck up, lad," his mentor sighs. "She'll come 'round, eventually. And if not, well, you'll not be the _only_ inspector here with troubles at home."

He means well, clearly, but Greg doesn't find it very comforting.

 

.

 

October's winds are howling outside the walls. Greg's up early, yawning around his toothbrush as he gets ready for work. He studies his reflection critically: he estimates he's reached about one-third _salt_ to two-thirds _pepper_ , which makes him look far closer to fifty than the thirty-seven he is. It gives him a distinguished sort of look, he supposes. That's probably helpful, in his position; he's not certain his single year of authority would carry as much weight, if people didn't presume him to be older.

So far he's dressed only in his trousers; as he's thoughtfully stroking his face, trying to decide whether a rugged bit of stubble might be all right for the day ahead, Nadia appears at the bathroom door.

"Almost done, dear," he murmurs, presuming she's up to use the loo.

Her pink terry robe is loosely tied, and the flash of shapely leg in motion catches Greg's attention as he turns from the mirror. She steps up close to touch him, trailing light fingers through his chest hair and down his side, lingering at his hip and toying with the belt loop there. Her sleep-dark eyes catch his with clear intent, and he feels an answering trip in his pulse.

"Oh, _hello_ love," he says, breaking into a grin. "Good morning, I see."

"I think it is. You've got time, don't you?"

"Mm, yeah. A little bit. Long as we're quick..."

Chuckling throatily, she draws him out into the hall, speaking only with the heat in her smile. He's right here with her, on board for whatever she asks, eager to lose himself in sensation as she leans in; their kiss is slow, intense, dizzying.

Then, just when her maddening touch reaches the zip of his uncomfortably tightened trousers, she breathes into his ear: "Just don't bother with the condom, darling..."

A cold flash of realisation hits Greg, and he pulls back to look her in the eyes. "What?"

"You heard me."

"You're trying to...why would you do that?"

She tilts her head saucily. "Why wouldn't I?"

His willing mood is gone. Pity his lower half is slower to get the memo. Backing away from her, he tries to keep his voice calm, logical. "Don't you think it would be a worse idea, now, because you're a year older? Thought that was one of the risk factors."

"Yeah, I'm older. I'm running out of time, Greg! And whose fault is that? Remind me?"

He stalks into the bathroom again, unable to face her. Even his own reflection seems accusing, though; he braces his arms against the sides of the sink and hangs his head as he answers, "It's mine, yeah! It's my fault. I know it. You think I haven't blamed myself? _Christ_ , Dia."

Changing tack, Nadia steps up behind him and slips her arms around beneath his. She spreads her delicate hands across his chest. "I want this. I want _you_."

Straightening, Greg grasps her hands, pressing them tight over his heart to still their caress. "And I want you to be happy. But you know how this works, statistically. There's a good chance we'll end up with the same result, and that would be even more painful for you!"

"It's my risk to take, Greg," she retorts, glaring over his shoulder to meet his eyes in the mirror.

Frustration and anger wells up and spills over into his answer. "I don't want to see you hurt again! For God's sake, I never wanted this _the first time_!"

He knows instantly that he shouldn't have blurted that out. Her face drains suddenly to dead white; her eyes go wide and shocked.

"Fuck, Dia, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. You _know_ that's not what I meant..."

"Then why don't you tell me exactly what you _do_ mean, Greg?" Her voice is low, dangerous. She tugs her hands away from his, pulling her robe tight around herself as she puts space between them once more.

"Nadia. Love. Don't do this to me." _Don't drag me back into this, make me say it all again. You already know my answers._

Nadia stares him down across the bathroom. Finally she says, "Go on, go to work. I think I'm going to go visit Mama today, and stay there for the weekend." She sweeps out of the room, leaving him alone with his guilt.

He wonders how everything in his life has become so complicated. It hasn't been simple in a long, long time.

 

\-----

 


	9. Well Met

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg feels as if his whole world has just turned itself inside out. But, oddly, the opposite side seems brighter.

  
**9\. Well Met**  


.

 

Greg's missteps may have been superficially forgiven, but it's clear that Nadia hasn't forgotten. His pleading apologies—given to her over the phone, to the surreal and distracting accompaniment of Baba Cosmina loudly singing some Romanian folk song in the background—had brought her around somewhat, though she hadn't cut her stay short. And although they'd called the fight over, afterwards, its unpleasant flavour lingers in the air between them, long into the following year. They make an unspoken pact not to mention children, or his unnamed condition, or the sharp decline in their sex life. The omissions stretch into awkward, sullen silences over meals, dormant land mines they cover by switching on the news while eating.

Nadia begins to spend every other weekend at her mother's. It's ostensibly to help her care for Baba, less mobile at eighty-five but no less headstrong; still, when Greg offers to come along and help out, she makes it clear he's not required.

By 2001, the accumulated stress has visibly taken its toll on him. He's sleeping poorly, and his muscles ache; he's begun throwing himself into work with grim determination, looking for reasons to stay late or arrive early. Left to his own devices, he sometimes subsists for entire days on almost nothing but black coffee and biscuits.

Occasionally, he handles a ripple. They're mundane dangers, like inattentively stepping out in front of a bus, though Greg can't quite tell if Sherlock might be high at the time—and they're followed by brief, stabbing tension headaches that leave him feeling tired and haggard as well as anxious on Sherlock's behalf.

He knows that he's walking a dangerous tightrope, and that it's bound to snap on him. Yet he can't see any way out but through.

 

.

 

When he'd worked under DI Parsons, Greg had become quite familiar with Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. Depending on the needs of their cases, Yard inspectors can work with the staff at practically any of the well-respected hospitals in the central city; most tend to choose a favourite, though, and Parsons has a close working relationship with Charles Stern, head of the Barts mortuary. Since he's been in charge of his own investigative team, Greg has stuck by Stern as well, figuring familiarity would breed comfort.

There's a new pathologist working there, this spring, a quiet slip of a girl with pale skin and flyaway brown hair. Greg's seen her around a few times now, usually running errands for Stern or hovering behind him to deliver test results. He's never really been alone in the room with her, and they haven't exchanged more than polite greeting. But tonight, Greg is on the phone, while he sits and waits in the long hall for Stern to complete a post-mortem unrelated to his own pressing case—and even if the new girl was standing right there next to him, he likely wouldn't notice.

"What do you mean, you're not coming?" Nadia's voice is bordering on shrill, on the other end of the phone.

"Sorry, love, but I have to deal with this," he answers. "The first victim's sister was found dead, today; I've got to stick with the case."

"You _promised_ ," she spits. "I told you this dinner was important to me!"

_Less than two bleeding days ago, as if I could possibly control an ongoing murder investigation, and I only promised I'd try!_

Aloud, he says instead, "Look, I'm _sorry_ to miss it, but I can't change this! I'll be at the next one."

"Sure you will. I'll believe it when I see it, Greg."

"If you just—" It's no use; Nadia has hung up on him, and that tips him right over the breaking point. He pounds his right fist down hard into the seat of the folding chair beside him; pain immediately shoots up from his knuckles, and he exhales a long, high-pitched groan through his nose.

A timid voice pipes up from the end of the hall. "Bad day?"

Greg's eyes pop open to see the young pathologist. "Oh, sorry, uh, didn't realise anyone was— _yeah_ ," he sighs, slumping in the seat, "bad day."

She's walking towards him, now, clutching a clipboard against her chest like a shield. "You should let me see that," she says. He must be looking at her strangely, because she immediately flushes and follows it up with, "Um. I mean, you might've really hurt yourself..."

Greg looks down at the hand he's got pressed into his thigh. It _does_ hurt. "Don't think I mucked it up _too_ badly, Doctor—sorry—"

"Hooper. Molly. It's all right. I'm still new; Dr Stern isn't much for introductions, anyway." She tilts her head, takes a short step closer and lays the clipboard on a nearby chair. "The hand?"

"Yeah, okay." He stands and holds it out, wincing in equal parts discomfort and embarrassment as she carefully manipulates his fingers.

"I don't think you'll be needing the A&E, Inspector," Molly concludes shortly, releasing his hand with a short glance up at him. "But you could do with a bit of antiseptic."

"I'm sure it's fine. Doesn't hurt much," he lies.

"Not that I don't believe you, but. Well. You shouldn't be going in _there_ with open wounds." She indicates the morgue, down the hall behind her, with a flick of her head that makes her braided hair snap over her shoulder.

"It was stupid of me. I shouldn't trouble you."

"Come on," she tells him, already beginning to walk away, "Dr Stern will be awhile, yet. _Don't_ think you can get past me to see him. Not unless you at least let me put a plaster on that."

She's a head shorter than him, and looks light as a feather; Greg pauses for a second at the absurd image of her stopping him. With a tiny, bemused smile, he follows her from the hall.

 

.

 

Dr Hooper has sat Greg down at a table in one of the deserted pathology labs. After a little rummaging in a cabinet at the back of the room, she returns with a double handful of supplies. "Don't worry," she chirps, perching on the next stool. "I do know how to deal with living patients, too. At least, for things like this. Sometimes one of us gets nicked by a slide. Andrew broke an Erlenmeyer flask, last week."

"Did I look worried?"

"A little. Or maybe that's just your face?"

"Gee, thanks." He sucks air through his teeth at the antiseptic's sting.

"Sorry, Inspector."

"It's fine. You can call me Greg." It seems ridiculous to stay so formal with someone who's practically holding his hand.

"Okay. Call me Molly, then."

There's a moment of quiet while she finishes swabbing his split knuckles. As she sets the used swab carefully aside, she asks, "So how long have you been married?"

"Ten years, this July. Look, I dunno how much you heard—"

"Don't worry about it. It's fine."

He feels like he needs to explain, nonetheless. "She manages a catering firm. The British Hospitality Association has some big annual gala dinner tonight; they're presenting her with an award, or a certificate or something."

Molly looks up from the gauze. "Or something?"

"Yeah—all right. I admit it, I should know!"

"I'm not judging! I mean, maybe you _should_ , but. Um. You probably have more on your plate."

"You don't know the _half_ of it," he sighs.

She nods, briefly lifting her hands away to snip a precise length from a roll of cloth tape. "It's tough, being in the more stressful career. The guy I'm dating, he works in a pet shop..."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Well, I say dating. But. I don't actually know if that's going to last much longer." She cuts another length of tape. "He's lovely, but he just doesn't _get_ it. My job; the schedule, the responsibilities. A bit like your wife, I should think. And, it seems it's starting to sink in with him that I actually do spend most of my time with dead people..."

Greg snorts. "I don't have the faintest idea why, but the smell of corpses always seems to put _some_ people off!" He raises his hand and admires the neatly applied bandaging. "Thank you, Molly, it feels better already. And thanks for the perspective. For someone who works so much with death, you seem like you understand the living pretty well."

She shrugs and begins clearing up the table. "I'm older than I look."

"And I'm younger than I do," he replies, surprised to feel a smile spreading across his face.

"Well, Greg, next time you're looking for corpse-friendly relationship advice, I guess you know where to find me."

He does; the next week, he brings her a coffee instead of an injury, and they sit and chat about their significant others. He can't tell Molly his real secrets, of course, but it helps him immensely to find a confidante of any kind. It's the beginning of a long friendship.

 

.

 

Despite the understanding outlet Greg's found in his new friend, the next few years are less than peaceful at home. He takes overtime, more and more often. He starts smoking again, even though he knows Nadia disapproves.

But his solve rate goes up, and after a while his team rates as the third best in case closure over all of Homicide and Serious Crime. It's a satisfying feeling—and as he's continued to fail in his efforts to get back on Dia's good side, he's resolved to take the happiness of his success as it comes.

As Molly keeps telling him (warranted or not, and possibly meant more for her own sake), there's no sense in making his life _entirely_ about another person.

He sometimes thinks amusedly about the fact that he's basically done just that ever since he was thirteen, and wonders what his friend would say if she knew.

 

.

 

Greg considers himself lucky, in the officers he's been given to supervise. Although Oliver Berkeley is almost two years older than Greg, and could easily have been in the running as a candidate for Inspector himself, he bears Greg no ill will for his position. During cases, he's a competent and level-headed sergeant, providing solid support even when he doesn't quite follow Greg's train of thought—and in the off moments, he can be relied upon for amiable company during cigarette breaks.

Greg's second sergeant, Sally Donovan, has been part of his team since February of 2004, about six months ago. She's still green, and compared to Ollie she's quite temperamental, but she's incredibly determined and she shows great promise. Granted, Sally may not have been Greg's first choice of teammate, but it's fitting for the division's least-senior grouping to gather the young blood. Even being third best doesn't quite get him the freedom to choose his own subordinates yet; after five full years as a DI, he's still only forty-one.

Tonight, Sally bustles in as Greg's frowning at a mess of blood spatter, covering the walls of a second-storey loft space. The artist in residence had met a grisly end, indeed.

"Sir," she pants, having obviously jogged straight upstairs from the street, "there's some young punk outside, and he's causing a ruckus."

"Well, what's he want?" Greg mutters, leaning close to squint at the shape of a droplet and trying (not quite successfully) to picture the sort of force necessary to create it.

"He keeps pointing up at the windows here,"—she gestures to the large, sectioned pane of glass behind them—"and saying we're _idiots_ , that we're not looking at the right things. Says he wants to come in and _solve the murder_ for us!"

"Oh, _really_?"

"Yeah, I've got DC Kerry holding him off for now. We're pretty sure he's high. But, he certainly seems to know an awful lot about the scene. Think he might be a suspect?"

Greg sighs and moves away from the wall, rolling his neck to crack it. "Could be a person of interest, at the least..."

That's when he turns around, looking down at the cordon line on the lamp-lit street below, and his words die off in his throat; it takes all he has not to pass out from the shock of seeing that familiar riot of dark hair, that uniquely angular profile, without the dim, watery sheen of a ripple overlaying it.

"Sir?"

The young man turns with an angry, sweeping gesture and points up again, right at the spot where Greg stands staring down; _no_ , slightly above him. Even at this distance, his face is heart-stoppingly recognisable.

" _Sir_ , shall we have him taken in for questioning?"

Greg swallows hard and gives himself a fast mental shake. "No. Ah, no. Just—just you stay here, Donovan..." He pivots, tipping his head upwards to see the spatter he hadn't yet noticed on the studio's high coffered ceiling. "And get me good documentation of those other cast-off drops, overhead. I'll go down and give him a talking-to."

All the way down the stairs, Greg tries to talk himself through the coming encounter, calm himself down. _Play it cool, you've never met him, he doesn't know you. Don't say anything about him. Or about yourself, if you can help it. And for God's sake, don't stare!_

He stares, though. He can't stop himself. And when the boy opens his mouth, his voice is so much the _same_ —and yet different, in person. Richer, more cutting.

 _Might be a coincidence,_ he warns himself weakly, one last time, steeling himself to step out to the kerb where DC Kerry waits.

"So you're the Detective Inspector in charge of this struggling bunch?" their interloper sneers, turning to face Greg. His hands are jammed into the pockets of the thin windbreaker he wears, and his elbows jut out defiantly.

"I am," Greg confirms, clamping his lips over the flood of inadvisable words that crowd his throat.

"Morons, the lot of you."

Constable Kerry takes a step forward, his round face darkening, but Greg waves him back with a placating gesture.

"Is that so? Why, pray tell?" He thinks the questions come out sounding annoyed and patronising, which is what he's after—he wants to run this boy off, not make friends, but he can't help wanting to hear a _little_ more.

"It _should_ be obvious, plain as the noses on your faces! But how often do any of you half-trained plodders look at anything that isn't directly in front of you? There's a mess all over the floor, granted. But the _ceiling_ is where you should be focusing your attention!"

In response, Greg raises an eyebrow and makes an unhurried turn to look up at the brightly lit loft window, hoping— _yes_. "Oh. You mean, like we're doing right now?" he asks, nodding placidly at Sally's distant figure aiming her camera upwards.

The young man beside him follows his gaze, and lets out a huff of breath. "Yes," he mutters. "Not that you'll likely have the first idea what you're looking at."

"You'll want to watch yourself, talking like that," Greg says briskly, facing him once more with arms crossed. "You're liable to make someone think you were involved in the crime."

He whips his head around abruptly, opening his mouth for what's clearly meant to be a scoffing denial, but then snapping it shut again. " _You_ don't think that," he says, blinking at Greg somewhat suspiciously.

There's something leaping in Greg's gut, doing nervous cartwheels, but somehow he manages a stern face. "Maybe _not_ , young Mister..."

"Holmes. Sherlock Holmes."

 _It's true,_ he thinks, and he locks his suddenly watery knees, willing his expression to stay impassive. _It's all true. Bloody buggering fuck._

"Well, Mr Holmes, I think you've made enough of a nuisance of yourself for tonight, don't you? Go on; move along, before I rethink my assumption."

For a moment it seems Sherlock will persist. Greg forces his features to stone, staring him down, and to his incredible relief the young man sniffs scornfully and stalks away down the street.

Greg feels as if his whole world has just turned itself inside out. But, oddly, the opposite side seems brighter.

 

\-----

 


	10. The Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg knows it's his responsibility to play it safe; obviously, he can't count on _Sherlock_ for that.

  
**10\. The Dance**  


.

 

For over twenty years, Greg had held himself resolutely from any and all temptation to seek out Sherlock Holmes. His reasoning had been sound, although backed up by strong anxieties: had he found that there was no man in England bearing that strange moniker, it would be a final proof of the mad delusions a part of him had suspected all along. Better, surely, to centre himself within the twilight safety of uncertainty—to keep a tight hold on the possibility that he wasn't sick, or crazy. 

Now, he knows he's sane. Or if not entirely sane, then at least validated. 

It's very nearly too much to handle. 

After the night of that brief meeting, he tries his best not to dwell on the implications, at least until the close of the murder investigation. A day and a half later, the break in their case does, in fact, come from the overhead blood spatter that Sherlock had pointed out; Greg feels a warm surge of pride when he realises, though he doesn't say anything to Donovan or Berkeley about the source of the tip. The next morning, he sits at his desk, replaying every moment of the encounter repeatedly until it seems entirely unreal...and then, only then, does he open the Metropolitan Police records search module. 

_Sherlock Holmes,_ he types, one slow letter at a time. The cursor blinks patiently while he pauses to master himself, swallowing against the tightness in his throat and blinking hard. Finally he moves the mouse and clicks Search. 

**HOLMES, W. Sherlock....1977.01.06........records available, view [Y/N] ?**

He devours every bit of information the system can give him, staring raptly into the screen as remembered images and details from decades of ripples begin to fall into place. The country estate, recently sold by empty-nest parents, both retired from academic fields. The older brother: Mycroft—not "My-coff" as Greg had heard for years through a young boy's lisp. The names of the schools Greg had learned to navigate almost blindly. At age fifteen, mention in a local paper: second place award in a young composers' competition, for a violin and cello duet. Warnings for public disturbance: two, no arrests. Finances, indirectly controlled through a trust. No employment listed, but a last known address in Shoreditch. 

There's so much to take in, it's overwhelming; yet there's not enough, not _nearly_ enough to satisfy him. He prints every page of the record, reading through it all again, and then he carefully slips it into a manila envelope and tucks it safely away. 

 

.

 

The next two months are all quiet; there are no ripples, still, and no unexpected visitors to Greg's crime scenes. Greg keeps his ears sharp, but he doesn't hear any of the other inspectors complaining about interlopers on their cases, either. He's largely unconcerned by the lack of contact; as a matter of fact, he finds himself feeling more relaxed and healthier on the whole than he has in the four years since Nadia's lost pregnancy. He stops joining Ollie Berkeley for smoke breaks, switching back to the patches on impulse; his chronic indigestion begins to improve, and when he wakes in the mornings, he no longer feels as if he's wrestled a bear in his sleep. 

Nadia begins to notice the change in him at home; at first, she doesn't really comment. In fact, things roll along basically as normal until mid-October, when he sweeps into the kitchen one afternoon, humming an old Billy Joel tune he knows she likes, and pulls her into an impromptu dance. 

"What's gotten into you, lately?" she asks him, smiling incredulously. 

"Nothing," he answers with a grin. "Just happy to be alive." 

"That might be a first! Tell me, should I be phoning the nice men in white coats right _now_ , or would you rather I wait 'til after supper, love?" 

"Oh, having me sectioned can surely _wait_ , my darling,"—he pivots and dips her low, laughing with her surprised giggle—"you know how I adore your cooking!" 

They dance a little longer, as Greg returns to disjointedly humming the song's chorus. Nadia tucks her head in alongside his neck, breathing deeply to enjoy the smoke-free scent of his aftershave. 

"I remember when you couldn't dance," she murmurs as they turn and sway around the room. 

"But then, I met a beautiful girl who taught me how." 

He feels her soft chuckle against his pulse. "You got lucky," she jokes. 

"I did," he nods; slowing, he shifts and pulls back to see her face. "I got so lucky, Dia. You're the best thing that ever happened to me—I mean that, truly. I don't deserve you; the chances you've given me, so many chances and I've blown it every time..." 

"Ah, love—" 

"I do," Greg tells her. His grin has slipped, at some point; he clutches her hands, strokes his thumbs across her knuckles reverently. "I love you, Nadia, I love you _so much_ and I'm just—I want to do better. I want to be _better_." 

Her eyes are shimmering with moisture, now. He can feel a prickling behind his own, as well, and he offers her a shaky half-smile. 

"So, what do you say? Take a chance on this cranky old idiot again? Teach me to dance?" 

She leans up on her toes and kisses him, and it's like a jolt backwards in time; it's answer enough. 

 

.

 

On the first day of November, a double murder is reported in an otherwise quiet block of Islington flats. It's messy, with signs of a long struggle ranging through multiple rooms, and after two hours on the scene Greg's already giving himself a headache trying to sort out the probable order of events. 

For twenty minutes Greg has been in the next door flat with Berkeley, interviewing the old woman who had overheard the disturbance. Although she says she didn't know her neighbours all that well, she's quite upset, enough so that she's begun slipping unconsciously into her native Czech as she tries to relate the story. She reminds Greg a little of Baba Cosmina, and seeing her so overwrought is making him uncomfortable; at the earliest opportunity, he thanks her for her time and directs Ollie to finish hearing her out. 

When he returns to the crime scene, Sally is waiting, arms crossed and face more flushed than he's ever seen it. 

"Donovan? What's wrong?" 

"That arsehole junkie showed up, _again_!" 

"Oh god. He didn't?" 

"He bloody well _did_. And the things he said to me..." 

"All right, calm down. Where is he, now?" 

"I very nearly punched his teeth out! The nerve of the punk," she splutters, clearly scandalised, "insisting he could tell me exactly what I'd been up to, last night—and _where_ —" 

_It must have been somewhere interesting,_ Greg thinks appraisingly; _and she'd not be nearly so upset, if he hadn't got it right..._

"And with _whom_!" 

"Calm down, Donovan. He's just a kid. Where is he?" 

She looks at him strangely for a second—apparently, she doesn't feel that he and Holmes have enough of an age difference between them to warrant that term. "He's on his way to lockup, is where! He was interfering in an active homicide scene, he was harassing me with personal information, _and_ he was high—completely off his gourd, it was obvious! Are you gonna tell me I was wrong to call it in?" she challenges, lifting her chin defiantly. 

Greg raises his hands, placating. "No, of course not; that was well done. I'm glad you were able to handle it. Now, back to business. Has Chalmers been able to tell us anything about the forensics, yet?" 

 

.

 

It's a few hours before Greg wraps up the evening's work enough to return to the Yard. When he does, he hesitates at the lifts: it would be best if he simply went up to his office, gathered his things and went on home. 

He _knows_ it would be best. 

The officer at the lockup desk doesn't even have to check his intake list. "Oh, that's the nasty ponce with the runnin' mouth. Coke, I'm guessin'. Yeah, I put 'im in the little one, end of the row; don't much fancy 'avin to break up any fights, tonight." 

"Hasn't he got someone coming to bail him out?" 

"Refused 'is call, flat out, 'e did. Says 'e'd rather stay the night 'ere than talk for one second to 'that insufferable prat', whoever _that'd_ be." 

"Hm." Greg has his suspicions, on that score, but he's still reluctant to assume that what he thinks he knows of Sherlock's life is the truth. "Right, well, I've got something to discuss with him. Shouldn't be too long." 

 

.

 

Sherlock's head jerks up at the rattling of keys in the lock. He stiffens sullenly, as Greg steps into the small holding cell—but his disconcertingly pale eyes flit all over his visitor. 

Obligingly, Greg stops just within the door, allowing the scrutiny—to an extent. He suspects that if Sherlock weren't high, Greg's intense reactions to his presence would stand no chance of going unnoticed. And yet, were Sherlock sober, those reactions might be so much less complicated and difficult to mask; Greg recognises the irony. 

"You. You're the inspector that worked the bludgeoned sculptor," Sherlock says after a long pause, straightening his seated posture in reluctant interest. 

"The very same. It was the cleaning lady's daughter, by the way, just in case you were wondering." 

"Of course it was. I could have told you as much," he mutters, bringing one hand to his mouth and idly tapping fingers there. "You haven't even given me your name." 

"No, I haven't." They stare at each other for a moment, sizing each other up, before Greg finally abandons his automatic reserve and somewhat grudgingly says, "The name's Lestrade." 

"So. Lestrade. How is it, that you've managed to be promoted to Detective Inspector so young?" 

"Funny, most people assume I'm older than I am." 

"Most people are idiots; premature grey is hardly a reliable marker for age. Or wisdom, for that matter." 

Greg can't help an amused snort, at that; this conversation already isn't quite going the way he'd planned. He takes a step to the side of the door, leans comfortably against the wall and crosses his ankles, settling in. 

Sherlock seems to take this as encouragement to continue. "Clearly, you've been a police officer for quite some time. Upwards of twenty years, I'd estimate. But you carry yourself more like a beat copper than a slow, desk-loving detective: highly alert, quick on your feet. It's deeply ingrained; more than half your years of service have been outside of CID. But it's obvious from looking at your shoes that you reached your _current_ position at least five years ago. You really were fast-tracked, weren't you? Unusual." 

Blinking in surprise at the rapid stream of information, Greg shifts against the wall and answers honestly before he can even consider why it might not be a good idea. "We had a retirement or two come up. Shortage of warm bodies, yeah? There was some pressure to find likely candidates, to maintain the staffing levels. But I assure you, I put in hard work to earn my keep." 

"Oh, I'm sure. You seem to have quite a complex about it, in fact." 

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?" 

He receives only a nonchalant gesture in answer. They return to brief silence; this time Greg studies Sherlock, while Sherlock studies the ceiling. 

Greg can see that the young man still exhibits some physical signs of his high—jittery movements of his fingers against the fabric of his cheap-looking grey shirt, unsettled eyes that alternate between not blinking and blinking excessively—but he seems to be trying harder to hide them, suddenly. He'd barely tried to cover his drug use at all, when Greg had met him two months ago; if he'd been shamming sober even a little bit, it was only because he'd thought it could get him what he wanted. Greg wonders why he's bothering with it, here, when he's already in a holding cell for the night. 

That's not what he asks, though. "Was there a reason you came 'round my crime scene, tonight?" 

"Specifically?" 

"Yeah. If Sergeant Donovan hadn't cuffed you...you planned on, what, telling her something we'd missed?" 

He shrugs. "I probably wouldn't have told _her_. She's horrid. But, yes, I'm entirely sure you _have_ missed something." 

"Like what?" Greg asks, thinking of how sharp Sherlock's eyes had been to see the sculptor's blood spatter from the street, a full storey below. 

"Well, how should I know? I never got _in_ , did I?" 

The short, unexpected laugh this draws from Greg echoes loudly from the room's white tiled walls. 

"It looked interesting. I was bored," protests Sherlock, sounding a bit petulant. 

"I'm sure," Greg says, still chuckling with genuine affection—and all at once, the reality of the situation comes back to him. 

_I'm acting like I've known him for ages, already; I can't be doing this! He mustn't know!_

It's like a spill of ice water down the back of his neck, and he withdraws immediately. The chuckle becomes a rough clearing of his throat. "Well, good. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how it would look, evidence-wise, if you'd been snooping around in that flat before we got there." 

Sherlock's gaze sharpens on him, and Greg looks away from it, hardening his jaw. He's already planning his escape, mentally kicking himself for thinking he could handle a one-on-one with this kid— _I've known for years he's bloody brilliant, what was I expecting?_ —when Sherlock speaks again. 

"So that's why you came? To make sure you weren't going to have to ask your forensic tech to rule out my prints and epithelials?" 

"Not a terrible reason, is it?" 

"No, no. Perfectly valid," replies Sherlock, shifting on the meagre pad of the cell's bench mattress. 

The word _excuse_ seems to hang in the air. At least, Greg can hear it. 

He begins to edge towards the door. "Now I know you weren't in there, I should—" 

"What's your ranking?" 

Greg snaps his jaw shut in surprise. "Sorry?" 

"There must be some sort of tracking, across the division's inspectors," Sherlock presses, leaning forward intently. "Isn't there? Closed cases, and successful arrests. Something to keep count of who deserves the Christmas bonuses. So what's _your_ ranking, Lestrade?" 

For a moment, Greg is baffled by the question. _Why's he want to know that?_ He can't come up with a quick enough reason not to answer. "Third," he says curtly. 

Sherlock looks him up and down again. "You could be first." 

Again, something unspoken echoes behind the words. An _offer_. 

Up to this point, Greg's been torn between the irresistible desire to communicate with Sherlock and the instinctive imperative to get far away; now, years of bottled anger surges up instead. "Could I, now? And why should I listen to you? Look at yourself! You're _high_!" 

"That didn't stop you making a special trip to talk to me. Why did you do that, anyway?" 

"I already told you." It's a game of tug-of-war, and Greg's end of the rope is slipping again. Time to get _out_. "Stop nosing around crime scenes," he snaps. "And clean up your act, Sherlock. It's getting you nowhere!" 

With that, he pushes out of the room before Sherlock can respond; motioning for the waiting officer to secure the door, he strides away angrily. He's out of the Yard and halfway to the nearest Tube station before his head clears enough to set aside the memory of that awful ripple, five years ago, and the sick knowledge that Sherlock's continued to shoot up this entire time. 

_And how close did you come,_ he asks himself, _to letting it slip that you'd seen him doing it? That you knew why he was bored? Fucking hell, Greg!_

He thinks, no, he _knows_ it would be prudent to avoid Sherlock, in future. He resolves to try harder to run the young man off, next time he decides to show himself around a case—if he even does, again. If Greg can keep up a façade of gruff disinterest, block him from involvement, that's what he should do. It's undoubtedly safer that way. 

Greg knows it's his responsibility to play it safe; obviously, he can't count on _Sherlock_ for that.

 

\-----

 


	11. Dangerous Ally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg's emotions, when it comes to Sherlock, have _never_ really made sense.

  
**11\. Dangerous Ally**  


.

 

Greg had hoped that the one-on-one chat he'd had with Sherlock in lockup would have left a lasting impression: specifically, in terms of the order to clean up and stay out of police matters.

Of course, he isn't the least bit surprised to find that the only impression Sherlock seems to have retained is the idea that DI Lestrade is a perfect candidate for harassment. He just keeps on popping up; practically every major homicide Greg's team pulls over the next few weeks comes with the determined young man snooping around the edges of the scene.

During their talk, Greg had got the definite impression that Sherlock's second appearance had been a coincidence—that he had gone out looking only for the distraction of a likely murder investigation, and had been somewhat surprised to recognise Donovan there. Now, however, it's clearly purposeful. None of the other teams in the division are being shadowed.

But if it seems he's continuing to gravitate towards DI Lestrade, in particular, it's almost certainly a result of Greg's visceral reaction to his presence, and poorly hidden reluctance to send him away...nothing more. Surely there's no instinctive pull that could be drawing Sherlock into the orbit of his protector? Surely, all these years, their connection has been a one-way glass, just as Greg had always assumed?

The thought that Sherlock might already have known _him_ , in the way that he knows Sherlock...it opens up a mixed bag of very strong feelings, but the greatest of them seems to be fear.

 

.

 

Despite Sherlock's persistence, by the time Christmas week rolls around he still hasn't managed to get past a police line. In fact, he hasn't even exchanged more than another word or two with Lestrade himself: Greg has undertaken a strategy of strict avoidance. Rather than leave hot-tempered Sally to confront Sherlock, Greg keeps Ollie on guard to prevent his entry. It seems to be a good choice; anytime Sally sees their would-be helper she instantly bristles—whatever insults Sherlock had left her with have dug their way deep under her skin.

"He tried out a new tactic, today," Ollie reports from the driver's seat of the fleet car, as Greg ducks in beside him for the trip back to the office. "Thought he'd get my goat by telling me awful things about my family."

Grimacing, Greg buckles in. "Sorry..."

"You know, I don't even care. I've been trash talked worse, by far nastier people; at least what this guy's saying is true!"

Greg is of the opinion that accurate insults would be harder to bear, personally, but Berkeley's always been a slightly odd duck. He hums sympathetically and says, "Don't worry, Ollie, I won't need you on guard duty forever. If we keep on shutting him out after the holiday, he's bound to lose interest and give up. We just have to outlast him, is all."

"What did you do to earn yourself a stalker, anyway?"

The term isn't one Greg had considered. He's not sure that he likes its connotations. Plastering what he hopes is a puckish smile across his face, he quips, "Guess I'm just that good, eh!"

Ollie laughs and scrubs a hand through his thinning ginger-blond hair as he turns the vehicle in at Scotland Yard's entrance. They pass through the security gates and bump over double sets of speed humps leading into the underground car park before he speaks again. "You asked me to watch him for signs of drug use, sir. I wasn't sure last Thursday, outside the poisoned professor's house...it could have gone either way, but today, he was _definitely_ on something."

It draws a long, frustrated sigh from Greg. "Well, I'm glad he hasn't yet tried to force his way in, or do anything really stupid. I know I said I wanted to avoid having to arrest him, but if you feel you need to...you've got my blessing, okay?"

"Didn't you say he told you his name, sir? Can't you contact someone, a family member or something? This kid is fucking weird, but he's smart. Really smart. Someone he knows should try and get through to him, before he winds up overdosing."

"Yeah...yeah, you're right. Guess I've just been holding out hope that he'd come to his senses on his own. I'll look into it."

 

.

 

Back in early 2002, a new telephone system had been installed at the Yard. The new phones are sleek, slim units, with banks of buttons to provide for every conceivable function and feature, and wide LCD panels that display detailed caller information, message logs and the like. Some had complained, at first, about the garish multicoloured notification light to show whether incoming calls come from outside or inside the building, and about the ringer options that sound nothing like the old, traditional style everyone had been used to. It's a running joke around the office that the change had been a thinly veiled attempt to weed out the older officers whose grasp on new technology is shaky.

Greg likes the phones, himself. He finds it reassuring to be able to clearly see who's ringing in, even if he's switching over from another call; he likes having advance warning before he picks up to Nadia, or DCI Edwards, or a representative of the press. He hides the same secrets from everyone, of course, but just having secrets to hide has made him grateful for any and every layer of security he can get.

This evening, as he returns to his dark office—no longer the shoebox-sized one, he'd finally been upgraded the previous year to one with windows and space for two seats—Greg can see the familiar orange glow of a waiting message, before he even gets the door fully unlocked.

He flicks on the lights, hangs his overcoat and moves around to sit at the desk, peering at the phone's screen: only one missed call, from his wife. She likes to leave little messages during the day, lately, casual confirmation of plans they've made for the evening or quick reminders about her schedule—she only rings his mobile number if there's something urgent. Greg expects this message to have something to do with the holiday gathering they're to attend at her mother's, probably just another item to add to his last-minute shopping; he'll listen to it in a bit, before he leaves.

First, he's got someone more important to deal with.

Sighing, he opens the centre drawer and shifts a pile of miscellaneous forms and memos aside, feeling beneath them for the edge of the envelope tucked at the back.

Outside the window, there's movement in the bullpen; Oliver has gathered up his things to go. "Happy Christmas," Greg calls loudly enough to carry somewhat through the closed door, returning his friendly wave.

Alone, he looks down at the packet of papers in his hand. He doesn't need to open it, he's got every word inside memorised...but he does, anyway; it's a habit, a comfort that he's allowed himself fairly frequently in the four months since Sherlock's first appearance. Tonight, he does little more than flick his eyes across the first few pages before laying the stack on the desk and turning to his computer.

 _Mycroft Holmes,_ he types, when the search field comes up. He could try contacting Sherlock's parents first, but he thinks broaching the subject of drugs might be easier with someone closer to his own age.

**HOLMES, Mycroft R....1970.04.25........0 records, new search [ Y/N ]?**

"The hell?" Greg murmurs, blinking at the monitor, then at the printout under his palm. No, he's spelled it right. And besides, how is it possible that the system is giving him no result, while still showing a date of birth? Even a deceased person—even a deceased _infant_ receives more detail, in this system.

_If he's changed his name, this record would link to it...could he have been placed under protection, maybe? No, again, that wouldn't show a birthday, it'd just say 'classified' wouldn't it?_

As he's musing over this oddity and pondering his next search, the phone begins to ring.

Except, it's never rung quite this way, before.

The sound of it is different—a sort of stuttering double-tone—and as Greg turns his head he sees the call display change, going black from bottom to top until the entire screen is solidly filled. The orange message light has changed to blue and begun flashing.

Unnerved, Greg reaches for the receiver. "Lestrade."

A smooth male voice speaks mildly. "Detective Inspector Lestrade. Please leave your office and proceed to the front entrance. A car will be waiting in five minutes."

"Sorry, what? Who's this?"

"Please do proceed to the car, Inspector," the man repeats, with just a bit more force. "You have five minutes."

"I don't understand—"

The call disconnects abruptly; blue light returns to orange, and the screen clears to its usual innocent readout of date, time and last message received.

"What the fuck," says Greg to the air. He's still staring at the phone thirty seconds later, trying to decide if he's being elaborately pranked, when his computer lets out a plaintive beep beside him. As he looks over, Mycroft's name disappears from the screen and the entire system inexplicably reboots itself.

That's enough incentive to move. With wide eyes, Greg hurriedly hides Sherlock's pages away and rushes for his coat.

 

.

 

The burly man who meets him at the street is clearly not the owner of the precise, cultured voice from the phone call. As he gestures to the open door of a sleek black car, he says, "This way, Inspector," in a deep rumble that fits with his bland suit and his security-man image perfectly. When Greg attempts to ask questions, he's stonewalled, unsurprisingly.

The car drives for roughly ten minutes; eventually it reaches a large, nondescript building, and turns down a gated ramp into a cavernous parking area below. Greg and the bodyguard are let off beside an unmarked door, and they walk from there through a long series of passages and card-secured entrances.

If it's meant to be intimidating, it's certainly doing its job.

Greg catches glimpses of office areas along the way, bureaucratic warrens of desks and cubicles that fairly shout "government". There are people at work, dressed in restrained business attire and bustling quietly about, although more than half the workstations sit empty at this point in the evening, with the holiday looming so close.

A minute past the point at which Greg has given up all hope of finding his way out on his own, the silent man opens a door and guides him into a long, open area, rather like a conference room without tables. There are a few chairs set along the walls, here and there, and two seats are arranged to face each other in the centre of the lushly carpeted space.

"Goodnight, Inspector," says his escort softly, with a curt nod. Greg tries not to read anything ominous into the way he hurries off, slipping through another of the room's multiple doors.

Two men stand at the opposite end of the room, conferring quietly. Both have their backs turned away from where Greg has been led in. Clearly their authority is far greater than that of the taciturn bodyguard, and it's obvious from their posture and attire that the shorter man is a mere lackey in comparison to the taller.

Greg resists the urge to clear his throat, instead standing quietly beside one of the chairs and waiting for his presence to be acknowledged. So far, he has seen no signs, written or otherwise, to tell him which governmental department or office he's been brought into, whom he might be here to meet, or whether he has cooperation, interrogation or chastisement ahead of him. He isn't sure what he's done, exactly, to deserve this special treatment—only that it likely has something to do with the unsuccessful search he'd run.

Whatever it is that he's stumbled into, he can only hope that it has nothing to do with his secret.

 

.

 

It probably isn't long before the two men finish their whispered discussion, but to Greg it seems like ages. He's moved on past nervousness into tense apprehension—he knows it's a strategy, planned intimidation to put him off-balance, but that knowledge isn't enough to stop it working. When the shorter man nods at last and strides away, Greg shifts on his feet and does his best to steady himself for the coming confrontation.

"Apologies; this is a busy time," says the taller man, briskly tapping something into his phone and still not looking around. "I have another meeting to get to, this evening, so I'll need to dispense with the usual pleasantries..."

With that, he slips the phone into his breast pocket and turns to approach...and Greg immediately bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself smiling in pleased surprise. Mycroft Holmes has grown up, since Greg last saw him, into quite a striking gentleman; it certainly seems he's done quite well for himself for a man of thirty-four.

Greg firms his expression purposely into something expectant and confused. Realising Mycroft's identity hasn't lessened his nerves, so at least he doesn't need to put on an act in that respect when he responds, "I'm sure I won't miss the pleasantries; frankly, I'd rather just be told who you are and why I'm here."

As Mycroft reaches the chair opposite Greg, he scans over him with sharp, narrowed eyes. It's eerily reminiscent of the look Sherlock wore, in lockup, but this scrutiny is unclouded by the haze of narcotics. "Have a seat, won't you, Detective Inspector?"

Greg had almost forgotten that he remained standing. He sits, now, and Mycroft does the same, still studying Greg's every move as he pointedly asks, "What, _precisely_ , is your interest in Sherlock Holmes?"

It's not an unexpected question. Greg has had weeks to anticipate needing to answer it. "He's been poking around," he says. "Getting his nose in at active homicide investigations, making a general nuisance of himself. I've been trying to discourage him."

"And this _discouragement_ takes the form of looking up his personal records, and visiting him for a private conversation in a holding cell?"

"Wanted to know what sort of person I was dealing with," Greg retorts, bristling. "He might've been hiding involvement, for all I knew that first time. And as far as stopping to see him in holding, well, at least _someone_ did! He wouldn't even call—" _you,_ he catches the word before it can leave his mouth. He's got to be more careful; Holmes is still playing coy about his identity.

"Mm. Fair enough," Mycroft nods after a beat, his penetrative expression slightly tempered by something else—regret, perhaps, though Greg can't be certain.

"If you don't mind my asking," Greg follows up, "what might _your_ interest be in the kid? He's unusual, sure, but I'd hardly think he warrants a watch from Intelligence!" The biting comment is as much a wild guess about the building in which he sits as it is a play for information.

"Ah, yes, I've been remiss. It seems I tend to overlook little things like etiquette, when it comes to matters pertaining to my brother."

"Your brother. So you're—"

"Mycroft Holmes, yes."

Greg allows himself a tiny internal sigh. _One less detail to worry about lying over._

"As you may have gathered," Mycroft goes on, "the reason my information is unavailable has to do with my rather sensitive position. Your interest in _my_ personal details flagged the scheduling of this impromptu meeting; your interest in _his_ created the need for it in the first place."

"Well, Mr Holmes, I tried looking _you_ up for one reason only. Considering the level of surveillance your office apparently keeps on Scotland Yard, may I presume you keep tabs on Sherlock as well?"

The response is more ambiguous than he had hoped for. Mycroft spreads fingers carefully across his knees and answers, "At times, it does become necessary. I have his accounts monitored, of course, and other major activity wherever feasible. For the most part, however, I stay away."

" _Do_ you, now."

"Do not presume to meddle in the affairs of my family, Inspector Lestrade."

Greg sits straighter in his seat at the man's brittle tone. "Trust me, Mr Holmes, I'd like nothing more than to stay entirely out of your affairs! But I do consider it my duty to ensure that your brother _doesn't_ lose his life to drug overdose, and I'd appreciate some assistance on that score!"

"He successfully completed rehabilitation, three years ago," protests Mycroft immediately, and then his face does something interesting, as if he regrets having spoken at all.

Greg's struggling with his own expression, as well, digging the nail of one thumb hard into the hidden side of the other to help himself focus on the poker face. He hadn't known about any rehab. His lack of knowledge must mean that it had been well-handled, and hadn't placed Sherlock in any danger...but even as he's pleased by that realisation, he's simultaneously upset by the clear evidence that it hadn't stuck—and also, strangely, _jealous_.

Greg's emotions, when it comes to Sherlock, have _never_ really made sense.

 

\-----

 


	12. Break Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doing the right thing always seems to feel bloody _terrible_ , anymore.

  
**12\. Break Point**  


.

 

Within about a fortnight after Greg's strange introduction to Mycroft Holmes, the besiegement had come to an abrupt end. It had taken only one well-timed text message to the special number he had been given, and within minutes a pair of well-dressed agents had arrived, cornering Sherlock away from the building where three women had been found hanged. Greg had watched discreetly from a narrow window in the stairwell as they'd spoken to him; Sherlock had clearly been less than pleased to be confronted, and unwilling to approach the black car that pulled up to receive him. When its door had opened, he'd balked outright and begun to spit vicious invective, some words of which Greg could hear even from his hidden vantage point. Apparently his older brother had made the time for a personal visit, after all.

It's now been three weeks since that afternoon, and Greg has had no word from either Holmes brother in that time. Not that he'd actually expected to be kept in the loop, of course: the upshot of the meeting before Christmas had been a distinctly grudging agreement on both sides. Mycroft would renege on whatever non-contact deal he'd previously made with Sherlock, and begin to directly exert his authority in the interest of his brother's well-being...while Greg would provide his cooperation by reporting Sherlock's status whenever he was sighted. As a side benefit, Greg's crime scenes would once again be uncomplicated by civilian interference, but at no point had Mycroft promised communication in return.

And as far as Sherlock is concerned...Greg isn't sure he'll ever _want_ to get in contact again, even if he has the opportunity to do so. After all, it must be obvious to him that Greg had made plans with Mycroft to remove him. Considering the obviously rocky relationship between the two, it's likely that Greg will henceforth be seen as an enemy, not to be trusted.

It should be satisfying; after all, what better way could there have been to accomplish what was necessary? He'd wanted Sherlock to get clean, for the sake of his safety; he'd wanted to keep Sherlock out of his way, away from his work, for the sake of his secret. An arrangement with Mycroft was the most expedient way to solve both problems.

The gnawing guilt is just a side effect of success, really. Greg is sure he can learn to ignore it.

 

.

 

For Valentine's Day, Greg procures a reservation at a high-class Italian restaurant that Nadia's been hoping to try. As they're escorted to a table near the centre of the crowded space, he imagines the eyes of other couples following them: his gorgeous wife outshines him in her incredible strapless dress, and he knows he probably looks more than a decade older than her with his profusion of silver hair, but he's wearing his best suit to compensate.

"Libbey's started dragging me along with her to a new spin class," Nadia comments, as Greg's studying the wine list.

"Uh-huh. Is this another one of those ridiculous theme ones, then? You said that Hot Bollywood class was terrible, last summer."

"It's not bad, actually. I really liked last week's class. Though I don't think Lib is all that serious about it. Far as I can tell, she signed us up so she'd have an excuse to spend time with the instructor."

Greg grunts. _Pinot Noir or Zinfandel? Dia usually likes mellow, better..._ "So I presume you've already sussed out whether the bloke has any potential, right? It'd be a bloody miracle if Libbey got herself a man."

"Oh, hush love," she scolds him, but she's giggling. "Actually, Bryce is quite fit. And he's got a day job teaching PE at Avondale Park School, so he's good with kids. Libbey could use someone who can help her, on the weekends she has Jason."

"Well, I wish her the best," he says, smiling, and then the waiter reaches their table and all thoughts of Nadia's luckless friend leave his head.

The meal promises to be fantastic; it had better be, for the price of the evening's special menu. They share an appetiser of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, with a balsamic drizzle that makes Nadia groan in pleasure, and then they're each served a delicate tureen of rich lobster bisque. It's as good as it smells, and Nadia is over the moon for it; she threads one of her ankles between his under the table, and gives him a smouldering look that promises he'll be reaping rewards for his choice of romantic outing, later.

That's when it all goes a bit shit.

Greg's mid-sentence between bites of soup, giving Nadia a humorous account of an odd witness statement he'd taken the week before, when the air leaves his lungs all at once and he chokes.

He hadn't been able to specify a table near an exit. It would have been an impossible request, on a fully booked evening like this one, and there have been no ripples for weeks, anyway—Greg had dismissed his usual worry, knowing that Mycroft had surely chosen a centre for Sherlock's rehabilitation that was at least as highly acclaimed as the last one, if not better.

 _Just my fucking luck,_ he thinks, as he swivels his head frantically for a way out he already knows he doesn't have; his spoon clatters from his hand, forgotten.

The image that overtakes Nadia's shocked face is dark, lit only by streetlamps; even before the scene coalesces enough for Greg to see the kerb or the fenced lawn of the facility behind it, he can hear Sherlock's angry words tumbling out at high speed.

"You truly think, after all this, that I'd willingly relocate to anyplace _you've_ chosen? That I would agree to remain under your thumb?"

He looks scruffy and tired in the sallow sodium light—he doesn't grow a beard well—and he's carrying a lumpy, dark plastic bag that slaps against his leg as he stalks down the pavement. Greg presumes it to be personal effects with which he'd entered the facility.

"It's better than that slum where you were hiding out! Honestly. You insist on living in filth, as if that's the only way you could possibly distance yourself from us!" Following after his brother, Mycroft looks nearly as stern and unruffled as he had when Greg met him, but his voice is full of overt emotion: disdain, frustration.

"Maybe I _like_ it," Sherlock spits, "did you ever think of that?"

"You think you owe something to those people, those two irredeemable addicts you made housemates? You think they _care_ about you? You're wrong, Sherlock!"

At this, Sherlock spins and closes the remaining distance between them in two fast strides, shoving the flat of his palm into the centre of his brother's chest to push him away. "You know _nothing_ about them!"

Greg understands, now, where he needs to be; Sherlock's impassioned shout sends him two paces backwards into the street, and without hesitation Greg is already flinging his bodiless awareness out to the driver of the lorry that's come 'round the corner at speed. It's a simple _push_ , one he's performed all too frequently; the brakes scream and catch, the driver's hands clench on the wheel.

He sees Mycroft's face through the windscreen, frozen for a second in a shocked rictus, and then there's air and light again—and Nadia's voice, brittle with upset.

"Fuck," he says hoarsely, reaching out for her hand as he assesses the situation. "Sorry, sorry..." He's spilt the bisque all over his trousers, and knocked over his half-full wineglass; the maître d' is standing nearby with two other waiters, looking terribly concerned.

Every eye in the restaurant is on them; this time, Greg knows it's not his imagination.

 

.

 

April's first days are as rainy and cold as March had been, but on the fifth there is sun, and a bracing breeze; Greg's thankful for the clean chill of the air down his throat as he steps away from his team's newest crime scene.

Sally and Oliver are still inside with the body, working with two forensics technicians to document the details. It's a nasty one: it looks like the poor man had been methodically disemboweled, and judging by the state of his tied wrists on the chair, he may have been alive for much of the process. It leaves a bad taste in Greg's mouth. The notebook he'd left in the car was a fairly obvious excuse to get out of the building for a couple minutes, but his sergeants didn't seem to begrudge him the break.

Just as Greg steps under the police tape, letting it snap down behind him, he sees movement from across the street. _Well, here we go again then,_ he thinks, stopping where he is and bracing himself to speak with the young man who's rushing towards him.

" _This_ is an interesting case," Sherlock says, his excited, restless eyes flicking back and forth between the barricaded house and Greg himself as if gathering equal amounts of data from each. "Messy; you're regretting the curry you ate for lunch. And the extra equipment that forensic tech was carrying in—ah, perhaps a gutting? Something with lots of pieces, at any rate; more to collect and tag...he was a tax accountant, wasn't he?"

"I don't think _you_ need to be privy to the details," Greg replies coolly, focusing on Sherlock's pupils. They're blown wide, the irises surrounding them thin, pale rings within bloodshot pink.

 _This again, already? He couldn't wait more than seven fucking weeks?_ Greg reaches for the phone in his pocket, intending to send out a message to Mycroft's people, but he's distracted from it by Sherlock's headlong dive to duck under the cordon tape.

"Oi! Police business," he snaps, throwing out an arm to block the attempt. "Just who d'you think you are, anyway, barging in here?"

"I'm a consulting detective," says Sherlock, straightening with a smug look over. "The only one you'll ever meet, in fact: I invented the position."

"You what?" asks Greg, with a purposeful tone of near-derision, but the incredulous grin is impossible to hold back. _Bloody hell, he really is._

"If you don't believe me," sniffs Sherlock, "let me see the _scene_. I guarantee that I can tell you sixteen things that you've failed to observe about the victim, within the first five minutes!"

"Sixteen, eh? Well, now. As tempting as that offer is, I'm gonna have to pass. See, I've got these pesky things called _rules_ to follow..."

"You also have a deeply ingrained desire to help people; to _save_ people, specifically. Stemming from some incident in your childhood, no doubt."

Shaken, Greg immediately moves to put some space between them. He draws a long, calming breath before asking, "And you think letting you hunker down over this mutilated corpse is gonna help me _save_ him? He's already a bit too far gone, I'd wager."

Sherlock scoffs aloud and takes a step closer to the building, leaning over the tape and prompting Greg to pull him in again. "You're missing the _obvious_ , Inspector. Exactly as usual. This isn't a murder—"

"Well, I'm fairly certain _suicide's_ right out—"

"It's a _kidnapping_!"

Greg purses his lips. "The victim lived alone, Sherlock. Nobody here to kidnap."

"Come on, Lestrade! Use your thick head! If I can tell from the _outside_ of the house, surely you can put together enough to see this! Just let me look, I'll give you all you need to know—"

Greg knows just where to go; he'd noted the alleyway through automatic habit as he'd arrived outside the scene, judged how many steps it would take to get safely out of sight. Now he grabs Sherlock roughly by the sleeve of his coat and drags him there, one-two-three in quick march before pushing him against the wall and jabbing a finger hard into his bony chest.

"No! You are _not_ getting in there. You're fucking _high_ , Sherlock! Do you think I don't know? Do you think I'm bloody _stupid_?"

After Sherlock finishes gaping in shock—at the manhandling, at the sudden explosion of temper, whatever—he blinks twice, rapidly. "You're an idiot—you're all idiots. But, no," he admits grudgingly, "you, Lestrade, you're not stupid."

Greg doesn't pause to appreciate the strange compliment. "I'm telling you this, Sherlock, and I want you to fucking listen to me. I _will_ — _not_ — _allow_ your involvement with _any_ case, nor your presence on _any_ scene, unless you are _sober_!"

"Well, I—"

" _Are we understood_?"

There's a silence, then, filled only by the ragged sounds of their breathing.

Sherlock's voice is small and subdued, when it returns. "But you will, if I am? Clean?"

"If you get clean, and _stay_ clean..." He nearly says yes. He _wants_ to say yes, wants it more than anything—and though he tries to school his features, he's sure his eyes are giving him away.

_Yes, I want to see you happy. I want to see you safe, I want to see you brilliant and whole—_

But then, at the corner of his vision he registers movement, a car driving past on the street outside the alley. A black car. He thinks of Mycroft, of the way the man's sharp eyes and skilled tongue had very nearly been able to flay the layers of safety from him in only one meeting—the danger inherent in every _moment_ spent in the presence of either Holmes, when one false step could expose what he's worked for so long to keep hidden.

No. It's too great a risk. He knows he can't keep up the lie forever.

"I don't know, Sherlock," he mutters, shaking his head _no_ though he can't bring himself to say the word. "I don't know. Get out of here. Go, now."

He jams his hands into his pockets and tells himself he's done the right thing, standing at the mouth of the alley and watching Sherlock go until his bowed head passes out of sight at the next turn.

Doing the right thing always seems to feel bloody _terrible_ , anymore.

 

\-----

 


	13. Keep Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter the risk, Greg knows he can't back out, not now that he's needed. He's never failed Sherlock, and he never will...so long as he has breath to give.

  
**13\. Keep Close**  


.

 

The afternoon wears on. Back inside the house of the disemboweled accountant, Greg makes a phone call and learns what Sherlock had been hinting at; apparently, the victim had occasional custody of a teenage daughter from a previous marriage. There aren't many clear signs that the girl had been in the house recently, though, let alone on the night of her father's murder. It takes Greg until sundown to figure it out for sure, with enough corroborating evidence that Donovan doesn't think he's just pulled the knowledge from midair. 

He knows it would've been faster, with Sherlock around. Well, all right, he doesn't _know_ that; he hasn't really allowed himself the chance to see the kid in action. But every tip he's been given, so far, has been accurate, and Greg can't seem to help his automatic trust in Sherlock's abilities.

Now, Greg's back outside in the thankfully fresh air, on his way to the car, intent on getting back to the Yard; he needs to work on tracing the victim's recent phone calls, and to try again to contact the girl's mother. He's sure, by this point, that the daughter is involved, though there's still the not-inconsequential question of whether she's truly been taken against her will—but, again, _Sherlock_ had insisted it was a kidnapping.

 _Still don't know what he saw outside here, to be able to say that,_ he thinks, slowing his steps as he looks over the features of doorstep and garden that would be visible from the road at the front. _I should've asked him, before blowing my top and sending him off—_

His thoughts are interrupted by a startling decrease in the available oxygen around him, almost as if his preoccupation with Sherlock has triggered his being thrown into a ripple. The plunge into the vision's dark, glassy water is abrupt and takes him off-guard; it sends him falling sideways to brace a shoulder against the high wall of the victim's side garden, mostly hidden in shadow.

He sees a house, long-abandoned by the looks of it, its shadowy interior painted orange by streetlamps that filter through the bare and broken windows. Remnants of furniture are scattered here and there; in the room where Sherlock stands, there is a heavy old desk and nothing else.

Sherlock is holding what appears to be a wad of cash, offering it to a tall, greasy-haired man who's dangling a small baggie enticingly from thick fingers.

 _Now I have to watch you buy your poison, too?_ thinks Greg, outraged. But then he hears the dealer speak.

"So you wanna pay off what Bess owes, eh? Think that'll clear your roomie's slate? Fine, your loss. Another twenty quid an' you can have yer fix tonight, too..."

Sherlock shakes his head, determined. "I don't need it. I'm done with that."

"Oh, _are_ you, now?" The dealer's laugh is an unpleasant rasp. "Naw...you an' I both know better, don't we? You were gone fer two months, sure, but not twelve hours ago you were back in 'ere, payin' yer dues like a good boy. Yer not goin' nowhere, sweetheart."

"I am. I'm done. I'm not like the others!"

"An' what have you got to look forward to? Yer cruisin' a one-way ticket, luv. Just like yer Bess an' Paulie. Sooner you know that, sooner you can accept it. You know you want _this_ , you sweet thing."

A shudder of pure revulsion runs through Greg's incorporeal presence.

" _Take_ it, and let me go," Sherlock hisses, stepping forward to press his money at the man.

"Oh, I'll _take_ somethin', all right—" There's a lunge in the half-dark, a gasp and a grunt, and Greg's in motion.

He doesn't really expect it to work; he'd tried repeatedly with the lead bully back at the boarding school, years ago, and had eventually decided that his consistent failure must have had something to do with the target's violent intent. Still, it's the nearest option, and it's worth a shot, so Greg tries to _push_ into the dealer's head. It feels _awful_ , like being tugged into a river of black rapids, immovable from their raging course. Sickened, Greg immediately frees himself and swirls outward in a panic, searching for an assist. If he has to, he'll look outside the house—but he doesn't know how much time he has.

 _There's gotta be someone,_ he tells himself, swooping through dark, dirty hallways as fast as he can. Away from where Sherlock is, he can't hear what's going on, just the distant reverberations of an exclamation and a growl through the old house that only spur him to search faster—and thankfully, he finds a junkie slumped in a corner four rooms away.

 _Fucking hell,_ it's a hard _push_ , at first—the inebriated ones always are—and when Greg's got his eyes he's disoriented, staggering. It's hard to move him properly; the translated sensation from the drugged young man's limbs is fuzzy and thick, like wading through a pool of treacle. It feels like ages, but Greg makes him stumble into the room at last, only to see— _Oh, God—_

The dealer has forced Sherlock up against the desk, bent over forward, hand tight at his throat, and it would be bad enough that he's trying to choke him but he's ripping at Sherlock's jeans and fumbling with obvious intent, rough and clearly not consensual.

Greg tastes an echo of copper as he throws the junkie forward at the man: _stop, stop, STOP!_

And then the _push_ is done; in the last wavering second before his view fades, he sees Sherlock running from the room, escaping, one hand hitching up his jeans and the other at his neck, eyes wide and panting but _safe_.

With a harsh gasp, Greg comes back to himself. He's shaking all over, and he's bitten his tongue; the flavour of blood is sharp and bitter. He makes it less than three steps farther along the garden wall before he vomits.

Sergeant Berkeley comes upon him in the aftermath; he's still hunched over, knuckling moisture from the corners of his eyes, trying to catch his breath. The back of his neck is clammy.

"Finally got to you, too, huh?" Ollie asks from a respectful distance. "Not surprised, I've just barely stopped myself chucking up a few times today. Wish we could open the windows in there, at least."

"Mm," is all Greg manages in answer, straightening with some effort. He's lucky the scene is gory; he can just play along, instead of trying to think up some stomach-bug excuse for his distress.

"I think Donovan has a bottle of water with her, sir, do you want me to get it for you?"

He spits one last time into the shrubbery and turns around, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Uh, no, thanks Ollie. I'm on my way to the office, I'll be fine."

 

.

 

Casework runs long into the night; Greg stays on for hours after he's already sent the others away, tracing and retracing each of his meagre leads step by step, until there's nothing for it but to shamble home and sleep a little of his precious time away.

When he wakes next morning, the bright wings at his temples have extended back over both of his ears, two long and unmistakable streaks of silver. Greg grimaces at his reflection; then, he opens up the toilet tank and calmly pulls out his emergency supplies, careful of any noise that might wake his wife. Using the little brush meant for moustache colouring, he applies a little dye over the new areas, just enough to make the difference less obvious; as the dark colour washes away over the next few weeks, it should look like a gradual change.

 _It's fine,_ he tells himself, trying to forestall his vain impulse to be disappointed. _It looks fine; probably nobody would've noticed but Nadia, anyway._

_And hey, I did good last night, didn't I?_

He hasn't been able to put the incident fully from his mind, although he's kept most of his focus on his work through habitual discipline. All that morning, until the moment he walks into his office to pick up the thread of the investigation, he's still turning Sherlock's words over in his thoughts. _"I don't need it; I'm done"_ —could it even be possible that one harsh rebuke from DI Lestrade might be enough to set him straight, where repeated stints in rehab hadn't quite managed it?

Perhaps it hasn't been such a good thing, after all, that Greg's kept himself so rigidly from involvement. At least, not on Sherlock's end of things.

Greg hadn't contacted Mycroft's office, the previous afternoon. He'd fully intended to do so, of course, but it had seemed prudent to wait until he'd calmed himself—he'd feared that the elder Holmes might be perceptive enough to divine the seemingly illogical depths of his emotion from the wording of an impulsively written text message. So he'd gone inside and set his mind onto the case, instead, with the thought that he'd report Sherlock's apparent relapse later in the evening. And then, with what had happened—well, the right time for an _unemotional_ account had clearly passed.

_"I don't need it. I'm done with that."_

_"I don't need it..."_

In the end, it takes three days' hard work to locate the girl, and another two to finally capture both the murderous kidnapper and his accomplice.

Greg never sends the text.

 

.

 

Four quiet weeks later, Greg sits down at his desk with a fresh coffee and a mid-morning snack. After ten full minutes pass with no interruptions, he judges himself safe enough to type Sherlock's name into the box on his computer screen. He figures he's owed the indulgence of another search entry, surveillance or not, for the assistance he's provided Mycroft Holmes.

When the results come up, he immediately sees the single difference he'd hoped for: a clearly listed current address. He jots it down and stuffs the scrap of paper into his trouser pocket, flicking his eyes somewhat nervously to the unchanging display of his desk phone as he does.

The first hints of sunset are beginning to become apparent as Greg finally leaves the Yard; he makes his way to Marylebone and locates the address he'd noted. The building's façade is bland and featureless, a block of flat beige brick with equally uninteresting buildings abutting it on either side; even the Dental Association nearby seems to have more panache. It's nothing like what Greg thinks of as Sherlock's style.

The building's entrance hall is narrow and stolidly conservative, and the wooden staircase appears to have been recently retreaded; Greg glances all around as he opens the door to step inside. If this is, in fact, the location of the flat that Mycroft had procured for his brother—the subject of their argument on the night Sherlock left rehab, three months ago—there's surely a camera trained on Greg right now. Likely more than one. He's not really expecting that Sherlock will be at home, but he's come this far, so he mounts the stairs without hesitation and climbs to the third floor.

Before he reaches the door of unit 302, though, he stops in his tracks: there's music filtering into the hall through the thin walls. It's a violin, and the melody being drawn from its strings is strange and intricate, hauntingly beautiful.

Greg's wanted to hear him play for over fourteen years. The music, now, hits him like a hard blow to the solar plexus; waves of memory roar up from the depths, scenes from the youth of a boy whose life he's saved countless times.

_I'm almost forty-two, now, and you're twenty-eight. I've cared about you since before I knew your name, since before I even knew you were real; I've thought of you almost every day of your entire life, and for over two-thirds of mine..._

He shifts his balance, unconsciously swaying with the pull of the melody, and there's a tiny creak in the worn floorboards beneath his feet.

The abrupt silence that falls is shocking. Greg's eyes pop open—he hadn't realised he'd closed them—as the door before him is flung wide.

Sherlock is barefoot, dressed in only a thin Henley shirt and dark flannel pyjama bottoms, holding his violin and bow together in one hand. "Lestrade."

He sounds surprised, as if he'd expected someone else— _someone unwanted,_ Greg thinks, though he certainly isn't sure that he fits into the category of _wanted_ visitors.

"Hello," Greg says, suddenly at a loss. He digs his hands around at the bottoms of his pockets and rolls his shoulders a bit as the pause stretches long.

Finally, Sherlock seems to come to some sort of realisation about generally accepted behaviour when receiving company. "Come in, I suppose," he mumbles, stepping aside to allow it.

"Yeah, all right."

Inside, with the door closed behind them, Sherlock is a brief whirlwind of motion for approximately seven seconds. He shoves a pile of printed materials from a low upholstered chair, rights the tipped shade of a floor lamp, kicks something oblong and heavy-sounding to roll underneath the sofa, and cranes his neck to peer from the narrow window before snapping its curtains shut. Then, he steps over to his side table, really an upturned packing crate, and bends to place his instrument gently into its case.

Greg watches all this from the small patch of clear floor before the door, and tries again to speak like an intelligent adult. "I didn't mean to bother you..."

"No bother. It's fine," replies Sherlock, turning to face him and tilting his head with a pointed flick of his eyes to the cleared seat.

"Okay. Good." He sits, for lack of anything else to do with himself; his eye catches on the dislodged papers near his foot, where the words _Forensic Technique_ peek out among the mess.

"You needn't try to keep it secret, you know," Sherlock says next.

Greg's eyes widen and shoot up at once; Sherlock is leaning against the side of his raggedy sofa, crossing his arms and ankles in a casually knowing pose. " _What_?" asks Greg, hating himself for the tremor of fear in his voice he's unable to cover completely.

"I already _know_ you've met my brother. It's entirely obvious that it was _you_ who colluded with him to have me removed from the scene of that triple hanging."

_Oh thank God..._

After a deep breath, he responds, "Well, yeah. I have to say, I'm surprised you came back around, after all that. You could've found another DI to follow after."

Sherlock scoffs and slides down into the sofa's seat with a thump, running a hand through his tousled mess of dark hair. "Hardly! I've seen them at work. They're not worth my time."

"Yeah, but I ran you off, and _colluded_ , and all." Greg knows he sounds moronic. He's just too thrown by the whole situation to organise his thoughts beyond not blurting out anything he needs to keep hidden. As it is, he finds himself voicing the very next non-secret thought that occurs to him. "I'm worth your time?"

"Don't be so tiresome, Lestrade. We've already been over this."

Greg moistens his lips, remembering the strange dance of their previous conversations. "Right, well, I can't just take you up on an offer like that, you know! Not without—"

Sherlock interrupts him with a sudden lunge forward from the sofa, landing on his knees; in two quick motions he's shoved his long sleeves upward and thrust his arms into Greg's personal space. "Look. You thought I'd started again but I hadn't, not really, not like that—it was just, I went to speak with someone and she wouldn't tell me what I needed to know unless I went _with_ her, and I decided it'd be okay because it makes me _think_ faster, see _more_ , it makes everything _not dull_! And then after that I figured out what case you'd pulled; I thought I could—"

"You thought you could help me. Because when you're using, you can understand everything." He frowns down at the faded marks, evidence of what he knows must be years of use. Just one tiny pinpoint stands out darker than the others, and it's clearly not fresh. It's been only five weeks; can he really trust Sherlock so soon?

"Faster, yes. But not only when I'm using, Lestrade." Sherlock pulls his arms away and retreats to his seat once more, eyeing Greg with trepidation.

Greg stares back at him, trying to reconcile what he's being told, and what he can't admit he knows already, with the face before him—it's haughty, and confident, and at the same time it's almost desperate, a guileless echo of the little boy he'd been.

 _I can't stay away; I mustn't,_ he realises; it's like a gong has been struck, somewhere inside, and he can feel the ringing of it all the way to his toes. _He wants to help me solve crimes; he's asking me to give him a reason to stay clean. Fuck, it's dangerous, but if he needs me—_

"I'll find a way," he decides, standing. " _Don't_ use anything else, and don't come creeping 'round any scenes, yeah? When I need you, I'll call. And I'll need to see what you can do, first; next week I'll bring something by for you to look at, and see what you make of it. All right?"

"A cold case? Murder?"

Greg nods, watching an anticipatory smile spread over the young man's face; already, he's wondering how quickly he'll come to regret this.

No matter the risk, Greg knows he can't back out, not now that he's needed. He's never failed Sherlock, and he never will...so long as he has breath to give.

 

\-----

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story stops here, but there's much, much more to come for Greg and Sherlock...Stay tuned for _Saving Graces_ , beginning in a few weeks!
> 
> Thanks so, so much to all of you who have left kudos and commented along the way; your support has been such a great encouragement!! Also, massive buckets of love to my betas, [HarmonyLover](http://archiveofourown.org/users/HarmonyLover/pseuds/HarmonyLover) and [directedbysherlock](http://archiveofourown.org/users/directedbysherlock) and [theclaygoddess](http://theclaygoddess.tumblr.com/), without whom I would be adrift and probably neurotic. (Though, if you ask theclaygoddess she'd likely tell you I'm neurotic anyway!) <3
> 
> I look forward to seeing you all again very soon! Please let me know what you think! <3 <3 M.


	14. (Cover Art)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cover art - basically, I just wanted to see if I could figure out how to post an image!

  
Sigh...possibly no longer visible as I had these images hosted on LiveJournal. Since deleting the extraneous chapter will also delete lovely comments that I like to come and smile at, I'm leaving this. If, eventually, I figure out a different way to host the images, this chapter will be updated. Sorry!

  



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